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TIMES Territorial Intelligence for Multilevel Equity and Sustainability

Executive summary
TIMES aims at creating an international internet-based platform to coordinate the activities of individuals, groups, NGOs, governments and all other bodies at all territorial levels working towards a sustainable future as a 'worldwide wellbeing'. This platform is needed because the worldwide activities at all territorial levels from individuals to the planet are not adequately coordinated for the accelerated actions required. For such acceleration of coordinated actions, this platform provides the quickest knowledge accelerator toward sustainable development (fig. 1). This quickest possible knowledge accelerator provides the quickest coordination of the worldwide wellbeing ecosystem as a generalisation of the worldwide health ecosystems extending medecine toward a 'worldwide wellbeing science'. It has the same main property: it is firstly helping those having the most problems for their quickest resilience and, as such, it is the most equitable one.

Complex systems science is necessary for coordinating the design of the TIMES platform. UNESCO has signed Cooperation programme for creating the Complex Systems Digital Campus (CS-DC) as an UniTwin ('University Twinning') for launching a new science: the CS-DC is a worldwide network of more than 130 universities in 32 countries. The commitments of the UniTwin are to create the same international internet-based platform as TIMES. Thus much of the design and organisational work for the TIMES platform is thus already done by the CS-DC.

A TIMES network of one billion members is expected in 2030 and will provide both the quickest knowledge accelerator as a 'worldwide wellbeing science'. For a rapid initial percolation, the CS-DC will write worldwide to the 20000 University rectors to extend its UniTwin with 132 Universities by more than one order of magnitude. It will write to all human organisations involved in sustainable development, e.g. the International Alliance Co-operatives with their 1.3 Billions members, the GOs and NGOs at all territorial levels and the Open Government Partnership with its 70 countries involved. It will involve the great service providers in all domains toward worldwide wellbeing. Indeed the TIMES platform is designed in order that each individual and each organisation has a strategic adaptive advantage to be involved.

Long term context


The long-term trend of the 21st century is the Anthropocene era where humanity is ever closer to exceeding its 'safe operating space' for the global climate change and the renewal of resources including many minerals, food, water, soils and fisheries in seas and oceans. This trend will be a constant risk of massive migrations and wars. It is making necessary the environmental revolution towards a circular economy, so as to stay in the 'safe operating space' called ‘viable space’ in fig.2.

But the long-term trend is also the inevitable transition toward the knowledge society Science and new internet-based technologies will be an essential part of designing a future world to mitigate the damage being done to our planet in the lifetime of ourselves, our children and grandchildren

Worldwide sustainability and wellbeing is about the dynamics of the strong footprint interactions between three coupled autopoietic worlds: Economy, Ecosphere and Society. The sustainability paradigm is at the intersection of the strong constraints of this three worlds (fig.2). United Nations has formulated such sustainability paradigm toward 'Worldwide Wellbeing' defined by 17 Sustainable Development Goals and their 169 Targets to be achieved by 2030 (Fig. 3).

United Nations are thus proposing the following framework and definitions for measuring progresses toward its 2030 roadmap for worldwide wellbeing (abbreviated as 'WW' in what follows):

Definition 1: A 'WW dimension' in a territory is any footprint (e.g. amongst the 169 UN Targets or combinaison of them) judged relevant for sustainability of the territory. It is associated with a measurable variable. This variable is the sum along the territory cascade of the same individual variables. It has thus a mean and a variance for each territory. An equity index is attached to this variance (like in the HDI report Human Development Index ('HDI')).

Definition 2: The environmental footprints of an individual is the footprint sum of its consumed products. Product are more and more strongly traced along supply chains and it is expected in a close future to have almost exact environmental footprints of each product. The EE-MRIO matrices (Extended Environmental Multi-Regional Input Output) of fig.4 provides approximate values of the environmental footprint dynamics of each product. The EE-MRIO dynamics of 43 countries can be found in the exiobase Definition 3: The 'WW state' of a territory is its present measured footprints. Its 'WW target' is the target domain that it expects to attain at some horizon, including its 'equity indices'. Its 'WW roadmap' is the past dynamics of the 'WW state' and its expected dynamics toward its 'WW target'. A territory is smart if its dynamics follows its ambitious WW roadmap.

Definition 4: Knowledge and know-how can aggregate across multilevel territories into an iKM. The CS-DC has the theoretical knowledge to design such iKM and the knowhow to create it (fig. 1)

Definition 5: The Worldwide Wellbeing Science is studying, along the territorial cascade, the dynamics and acceleration of the iKM, in relation with the dynamics and acceleration of individual expertises.

The following thesis is about the strong relation between definition 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5:

Thesis 1: If each individual member has the same opportunity for a 'Personalized Open Lifelong Education' (POLE) then a territory will be smart in this century.

The above thesis is an application of the 'complex methodological individualism' principle (Jean-Pierre Dupuy): Humans are creating a very large and diverse institutions of any kinds .. and then are prisoners of these institutions. But in a decentralized society, each intermediate organisation has 'social autonomy' (Cornelius Castoriadis) with the possibility to change its institutions including the main one, its constitution. A main thesis of Anthony Giddens is covering both the emergence of institutions and what individuals do and want for their future:"Society only has form, and that form only has effects on people, insofar as structure is produced and reproduced in what people do". .

The Complex Systems Digital Campus (CS-DC) is committed with UNESCO to launch worldwide Complex Systems Science (CSS). The CS-DC objective is to recruit a large part of the 20,000 universities worldwide. The commitments with UNESCO include the generic web applications SIRE, iKM, POEM and RAPSODY for developing Complex Systems Science. These web applications are also generic in TIMES as we will see in the four scenarios below.

The four generic scenarios of TIMES




TIMES as a worldwide scientific network aims to create a worldwide social network of stakeholders — individuals at home and at work, at any level of public or private territorial responsibility — toward their own worldwide wellbeing. TIMES provides to each stakeholder its internet-based platform, called the WW Dapp (Worldwide Wellbeing Decentralized application - fig. 5). The WW Dapp provides to each involved stakeholder the equality of chances to empower its knowledge, knowhow and expertise along its own smart living roadmap as well as the smart territorial roadmaps it is sharing responsibility (fig. 9). Each stakeholder personalizes the WW Dapp when practicing the 2030 roadmap of United Nations and using implicitly the EE-MRIO matrices for environmental footprints along supply chains (fig. 4 & 5). As said by the thesis 1 above, if there is, in a territory, equality of chances to practice the quickest knowledge accelerator, the territory will be smart.

Only science can design the WW Dapp as the quickest knowhow accelerator (fig.1) as releasing the huge personal information in an anonymous way: it is remarkable that such anonymous way is not only ethically required for data privacy (e.g. the European GDPR) but also scientifically required in the design of any scientific experimental protocol. This quickest knowhow accelerator based on 'social reinforcement learning' is continuously developing the 'Worldwide Wellbeing ecosystem' and, conjointly, the 'Worldwide Wellbeing science'.

Each scenario will deliver certificate on the individual knowhow expertise and/or attributing prizes at the top knowhow expertise (fig. 6). Prizes and certificates as incentives are necessary for the over-exploring stakeholders in their categories and territorial levels: that is the case in any 'coopetition game' like the sport. Indeed the main problem of adaptation is the exploration & exploitation compromise. In any co-adaptive population of cross-mimetic agents, there is a coopetition: a part of the agents are playing this compromise as close optimal explorer, a part are under-exploring and the last part is over-exploring. Thus there is a free riding in coopetition from the under-explorers (or the beginners) with over-explorers because they are waiting to see the successfulness of the more explorer before imitating them. Indeed 'coopetition' in a cross-mimetic society is a necessity for maintaining diversity amongst behaviour: the 'Fisher law' for co-adaptive processes — here between behaviours in interdependent situations — is saying that the mean fitness speed of the whole population is proportional to the standard deviation of its diversity; a society with cloned behaviours is not at all climbing its fitness mountain. Thus over-exploration has to be rewarded in different ways, at least through territorial prizes of any kind.

Each scenario is part of territorial intelligence as the quickest knowhow accelerator. Each scenario uses the 2nd internet revolution with its DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organisation) based on a smart contract and a blockchain for guaranteeing traceability and historicity, honesty and trust including the permission to use private data as required by the European 'General Data Protection Regulation' (GDPR). The 2nd internet revolution is a highway towards an integrated knowledge society accelerating knowledge and knowhow creation and diffusion. Each scenario is creating an ecosystem for each territory.

The WW Dapp is providing to each stakeholder its needed territorial iKM (integrated Knowledge Map). Any territorial iKM integrates the 'scientific Knowledge Map' with the 'territorial 'Knowhow Map'(fig. 6). Such Knowhow Map is the 'social reinforcement learning' of what to do in a difficult situation according to the stakeholder expertise level, whatever its position in everyday life at home or at work. 'Social reinforcement learning' is the quickest knowhow accelerator for a stakeholder: the knowhow accelerator is a virtuous cycle between the smartness of individual roadmaps it is synthesizing and of the advice smartness it produces when needed by an individual. This quickest knowhow accelerator toward smarter consumption roadmap creates the quickest adaptive pressure along supply chains toward quickest smart production roadmaps (fig.7). By a simple bottom-up side effect, each territory inherit a quickest smart roadmaps from its smart territorial cascade (fig.8), i.e. of its territorial individuals.

The WW Dapp as a knowhow accelerator inside the knowledge map is generalizing the 'health ecosystem' into a 'sustainable mutual wellbeing ecosystem': it helps, by design, firstly the individuals at home or at work which need the most help for constant prevention or quick resilience: such help can happen for each one along time. Such ecosystem obeys thus to equity, i.e. to the Rawls theory of justice enlarged at the international level. The Rawlsian property is an inclusive and equity strategy toward smartest wellbeing. As a consequence, in their territorial categories, all these stakeholders remain co-adapted with an equality of chances in the everyday life coopetition as well as for for the best roadmap prizes. The co-adapted knowledge & knowhow quickest accelerator — as a shared process for the most important common good, the integrated knowledge — is a Rawlsian co-adaptive Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS) through time (fig.7).

Such Rawlsian co-adaptive ESS is a strong attractor for the society dynamics with only one main commitment for being involved: agreeing with the UN wellbeing roadmap for 2030 and sharing data either publicly or anonymously with Science. This involvement diffuses easily by providing to each stakeholder a great adaptive advantage comparing to the non-involved ones of its category: that is a strong precondition for a worldwide percolation of the TIMES social network and scientific network. The threshold of percolation in human society is low, a very few percents. And this threshold is still even decreasing with the huge development of all social and scientific networks.

The WW Dapp provides to stakeholders the following four scenarios for coordinating their 'sustainable mutual wellbeing' toward the 'integrated knowledge society'. This four scenarios are devoted to the different roles that the same individual can play at different territorial levels. They are generic along territorial cascades (SMOG: 'Smart Multilevel Open Governance'), along supply chains (POLE: 'Personalized Open Lifelong Education'), along innovation series (WOSI: 'Worldwide Open Responsible Innovation') and along time (WOPP: 'Worldwide Open Probabilistic Prediction'). Other scenarios will be added if needed creating their own ecosystems. All together, these scenarios create a worldwide ecosystem generalizing the 'worldwide health' ecosystem. These generic scenarios are completely similar to the generic commitments of the CS-DC in its Cooperation programme with UNESCO: SMOG is similar to SIRE, POLE & WOSI to POEM and WOPP to RAPSODY.

How to do 'Multilevel Open Governance for equity'? the SMOG ecosystem
The 'Smart Multi-level Open Governance' ecosystem (fig.) provides to each territory equal opportunity to have a smart roadmap as aggregating smartest possible individual roadmaps thanks to 'Personalized Open Lifelong Education' (POLE ecosystem). Prevention or resilience happens with the help of:

•	the Worldwide Open Probabilistic Prediction ecosystem (see below WOPP ecosystem) to detect in advance some roadmap problems •	the Worldwide Open Smart innovation ecosystem (see below the WOSI ecosystem) for prevention or resilience of such problems.

The SMOG ecosystem will organize each year championship with prizes where each open government will attribute prizes to its smartest co-adapted sub-territories.

The scenario of each involved Governmental Organisation is more precisely to use the SMOG ecosystem for:

• coordinating its economic branch cascade in its territory for empowering the individual footprint as consumers: indeed its territorial footprint vector is nothing else than the aggregation of individual footprints as consumers. The individual footprint can be bad because the supply chains can be complex ones from different places through the planet: in such cases, territorial circuits including recycling natural resources, self-services or sharing mutual services can be invented or reinvented at the territorial level e.g. for personalized food, health, transport and education or for the sharing, circular or social economy. • coordinating its sub-territories and maintaining their co-adaptations including the prevention and resilience of inequalities between them as its own co-adaptation (Human Development Index of United Nations).

How to do an education toward smart multilevel territories? the POLE ecosystem (e-team)


The 'Personalized Open Lifelong Education' ecosystem provides an equal opportunity for each individual to improve its mutual wellbeing roadmap at home and at work.

The POLE ecosystem provides: The POLE ecosystem will organize each year championship at each territorial level with prizes for the best MOOCs or any citizen initiative improving the relationship between science, engineering, politics and ethics.
 * same equality of chance to each one to invent his/her smartest personal and professional roadmap inside the 'integrated Knowledge Map' with the multi-linguistic MOOCs (Massively Online Open Courses)
 * best advices in a difficult situation by the knowhow accelerator and, if it is not relevant, by an e-meeting with individuals and tutors for the same situation.

The POLE scenario is as follows for individuals. Miss X or Mister Y, through the TIMES smart contract, is giving the permission to science of using anonymously their personal roadmap and their 'personal Knowledge Map' (pKM), i.e. the personal trace within the 'integrated Knowledge Map' (fig.10 left). Miss X or Mister Y in the social network has an equal opportunity to keep her personal roadmap co-adapted by using the POLE 'social reinforcement learning' as a 'knowhow accelerator' continuously updated by all involved other individuals including themselves: when a problem arises for remaining co-adapted, the knowhow accelerator provides them some knowhow advices including scientific references helping their knowledge and expertise level to increase for this problem; and her chosen solution updates the knowhow accelerator. Furthermore, such virtuous cycle between always smarter individual roadmap and the always smarter knowhow accelerator provides the quickest possible accelerator (fig.10 left). If the knowhow accelerator is providing no 'satisficing' advice for a problem at some levels of expertise (fig.10 right), a POLE e-meeting is automatically created the current day and immediately invites those without satisficing solutions and 'tutors' at a higher expertise levels. The e-meeting is enriching the 'social reinforcement learning' with a list of different 'satisficing solutions' at different expertise levels. 'Smart advices or solutions' are concept very close to the 'satisficing' concept proposed by Herbert Simon: this concept denotes an acceptable compromise between 'satisfying' (the problem) and 'ficing' (old english verb, i.e. feasible solutions)

This POLE scenario is as follows for the service providers and their supply chains. Each involved service provider is accepting the smart contract providing to each client his buying history (privacy of personal data) and the footprint matrices of all its available products. Each involved individual is now choosing for each product the service provider offering his own best compromise between footprint matrix and its cost: the scenario is just a generalization of the web applications comparing only the cost for a product. The POLE scenario with for each involved service provider releases anonymously the individual roadmaps of its clients for its products in order to This scenario gives the 'initiative to the involved individual communities': it is an example of the 'Vendor Relationship Paradigm' of Harvard. This scenario is the quickest knowhow accelerator between the involved individuals, service providers and their supply chain: it gives an adaptive advantage to the involved individuals, service providers and supply chains w.r.t. the non-involved ones (fig.).
 * empower its own living roadmap for its product offer
 * accelerate its pressure along its supply chains for ameliorating its product footprint matrices and
 * thus accelerate the announcements of the future product footprint matrices in consumer communities for their individual roadmap.

How to do Smart innovation? the WOSI ecosystem (e-team)
The 'Worldwide Open Smart Innovations' ecosystem will provide equal opportunities to each territory to design the responsible open innovation it needs for prevention and resilience (see WOPP). The WORI ecosystem allows: The WOSI ecosystem will organize each year championship with prizes for the smartest open smart innovation in each category at each territorial level.
 * to worldwide give the same opportunity to scientists for extending the territorial interdisciplinary team if the open smart innovation is beyond its own expertise
 * to have thus the best chance of success for each open smart innovation.

History shows that the territories that are not using a new scientific and technological revolution increase dramatically their inequalities with those using them. Conversely, those using them can jump directly at the best level. Also the present world is characterized by important fractal inequalities at all territorial levels. Thus a great way for resilience of inequalities or the prevention of new inequalities is through ‘open smart innovations’ done with worldwide scientific e-team and using the 21st Century scientific revolution. Science and engineering needs openness for a large use of the innovation and its smartness checking in the future. Openness can be extended to ‘embargo’ at a close and well-defined time: at such date, the innovation becomes automatically open: it is especially the case for a series of homolog innovations by a private enterprise and a worldwide scientific team; each new innovation is recurrently with embargo until the next one is opening itself. Such permanent innovative process along the same technology is very similar to the POLE scenario with much larger time period. If the WOSI ecosystem is proposing several smart innovations, the WOPP ecosystem below can help if necessary to select the smartest one.

How to do the best territorial roadmap? The WOPP ecosystem (e-team)
The 'Worldwide Open Probabilistic Prediction' gives to each territory the same opportunity to do its best roadmap. The WOPP ecosystem gives equal opportunity to worldwide academic teams to help, if needed, any territorial interdisciplinary team for predicting by the best machine learning method on similar territories: Tournaments between academic teams will attribute prizes to the best machine learning method.
 * future difficulties in the territorial roadmap,
 * the consequences of some responsible innovations for finding the best territorial roadmap.

For each 'Open Government' scenario with its involved territorial community, its territorial roadmap is the aggregation of individual smart roadmaps as they result from the POLE scenario. The WOPP ecosystem help to select the most promising innovations if the territorial roadmap is not co-adapted in the present (resilience) or the ecosystem detect some expected problems in the future (prevention). The innovations can be either the most sophisticated ones from the NBICS scientific revolution or the most frugal ones with ideas coming from the tradition but needing scientific predictions or both. Such comparative studies for selecting the smartest innovations are difficult because they have to do some predictions on their social and environmental footprint impacts for the future by using 'similar territories'.

See the TIMES Flyer.



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