Understanding the interconnections behind our wicked problem
Ethan Kang, Teddy Smith, Pedro Dal Bo, Manav Shah, Justin Hopf
Problem Statement: How can we improve the resilience of agricultural tropical food production in a climate change-affected world?
Food insecurity is a problem that has defined the way the people live throughout human history. While it may seem as though we have an abundance of food we are now faced with a different problem. In the past the problems surrounding food security have had to do with the ability to maximize output from fixed set of inputs (labor, land, etc) now the issue has shifted. Now we find that our unsustainable energy consumption has affected our ability to produce food in traditional manners. The problem of hunger has transformed. We must now act on multiple different fronts. This means that we will need to find new technologies that allow us to further lower the ratio of inputs to output of food, but we must also work with policy makers to ensure that we do not allow this issue to get worse, we must look at the economics of farming to ensure that any possible solution is not fiscally disastrous, and we must look at how this affects those critical in the production of our food: farmers in countries where food production produce a large portion of their livelihoods. And the reality is that none of these factors are independent of each other, because a wicked problem is in part wicked because of its interconnectedness that ties each portion of the problem to another, where fixing one portion breaks another. Creating a system map allowed us to see this complex web of sub-problems and ensures that when we do eventually attempt to solve the problem, we will be able to juxtapose the macro scale problem with the micro level realities that living in a connected world imposes. Thus, it is important to consider the various aspects of the wicked problem at multiple levels — including high-level and low-level concepts — for the majority of humanity.
Tools Used
Kumu.io
Kumu.io is a data visualization platform that helps to organize complex information into easily understandable casual relationships.
Notion.so
Notion is a platform built on custom organization and collaboration by providing seamless transitions between a variety of applications, allowing for infinite possibilities in organization important information, especially within a team setting.
Our team Notion is available at this link.
Stakeholder Interviews
Although research helps with understanding a topic or concept, the best way to gain internal insight into a subject area is talking with experts in their fields, which provides a degree of information not available from basic research.
After discussions with our facilitator as well as individual research, we’ve narrowed down our potential stakeholders to the following:
Aris Georgakakos
- Dr. Georgakakos is a Georgia Tech professor with extensive research into hydrology, water resources, energy, and agriculture, as well as experience in related policy decisions for the state of Georgia.
Daniel Matisoff
- Dr. Matisoff is a professor at Georgia Tech who researches the fields of public policy, energy policy, and corporate sustainability. His work ties into the economic and policy sectors of our problem through his research on the effectiveness of solutions and policies to environmental problems as well as the impact of renewable energy on household costs.
Marilyn A. Brown
- Dr. Brown is a Georgia Tech professor that has experience with renewable energy. This is half of our problem, while it is important that we find solutions to the problems in the food portion of our problems, all of our work would be for naught if the problem of large scale climate change is not fixed.
Alice Favero
- Dr. Favero holds a PhD in Science and Management of Climate Change. Research in the fields of environmental policy, climate change policy, and economics. Could help us better understand the relationship between the governments, economies and food shortages as a result of climate change.
Michael Pearson
- Media Relations Representative for Georgia Tech With extensive background in covering movements in public policy.
Emanuele Massetti
- Dr. Massetti is an assistant professor at Georgia Tech with main research interests in environmental, energy and agricultural economics. He is currently researching methods to estimate impacts of and adaptation to climate changes.
Valerie Thomas
- Dr. Thomas has performed research in energy systems, sustainability, alternative fuel sources, and the development of renewable energy. She can help us better understand preventative measures and what steps should be taken by regions who want to fight against climate change.
Systems Map
Below is the system map developed to encompass the various aspects of our problem area.
Important attributes of the system map include:
Node Color
- the defining attribute for the main nodes of our system (environmental, technology/infrastructure, social/psychological, economic/business, and policy/governance/legal)
- ** although attributes were to be included as additional core nodes, they were instead represented by color for clarity of the system map **
Size
- represents how many outbound connections it has
Shadow
- signifies if a node has either no inbound or outbound connections
- a gray shadow of a node means it has no inbound connections; a blue shadow of a node means it has no outbound connections
Arrow Direction and Color
- indicates which node influences the other in the relationship and the relationship dynamics between the nodes
- negative influences are represented with a red line; positive influences are represented with a green line
- dashed line indicates a delay in time in the influence of one node on another
Some shortcomings of this system map is that important topics can sometimes be hidden in size by more general expressions due to the lower number of connections to other nodes as well as that topics spanning multiple fields are only grouped into one. However, overall we can observe the interdependencies of a wide array of subtopics for our wicked problem, as well as create an organized system through the grouping of these subtopics.
System Boundary
Defining a system boundary helped with judgment calls regarding the extent in which nodes included within the system map. For example, our system map did not include many “policy” type nodes. This decision was deliberately made to keep policy and legislation nodes vague, updating the nodes as we interviewed several important stakeholders to gain a deeper understanding of policies influencing our problem area.
Identifying Feedback Loops
With consideration of positive and negative influences, as well as delays, patterns begin to emerge that better explains the interactions between various variables in the real world influencing our target problem area. Two distinct forms relationships emerged: reinforcing feedback loops and stabilizing feedback loops.
Reinforcing Feedback Loops Example
Stabilizing Feedback Loops Example
global warming cause → reduction in crop output → social unrest → policy and social movements
** This was hard to visualize because it represented most of the system map which included many different nodes. However, it is possible to see this general trend when analyzing the system map **
Possible Points of Intervention
Points of Intervention are nodes where a change could make a tremendous impact on the system overall, with the thought process of “What are areas where taking action would have a positive effect throughout the system?”
We’ve identified several points of intervention within our system map as follows:
- Vertical crop farming
- More efficient harvesting tools
- Crop resiliency
- Availability of farmable land
- Less dependence on meat products
Significantly, many points were classified under “Technology/Infrastructure” group not only because of its connections to many other nodes in the system, but also because of its direct link to the capacity and methods of food production.
