Research project Model-based knowledge discovery: Decision support in local issues of global importance

Practices that hold significant societal importance are governed by law and public policy and often have complex organisational structures. These practices extend beyond individual businesses, organisations, and government agencies and involve numerous responsible actors and actor networks. There is often a conflict between the way things are done in practice and the requirements set by law and public policy. Organisations are dedicated to fulfilling their missions while adhering to legal requirements and managing their budgets. This often requires making decisions on prioritising some groups of problems over others and allocating resources for taking action.

This decision-making is filled with complexity, ambiguity, and gaps in information and knowledge regarding the problems at hand, the resources available, and how the practices align with policy requirements by design. Important operational knowledge is often tacit and cannot be easily extracted, documented, passed on, and reused. Because of this, decision-making may suffer, which might have far-reaching negative consequences for society as a whole.

In this project, I investigate three specific practices: (1) embedding functional inclusion in higher education, (2) reduction of CO2 emissions in the aircraft industry, and (3) complying with prescriptions for disaster risk reduction in forest fire management. Through the use of enterprise modelling languages and notations, I thoroughly examine their organisational structures and regulatory environments to increase the availability and usability of knowledge.

Special thanks
Our team owes a world of thanks to Susanne Hanger-Kopp and John Handmer at IIASA for their contributions during the early stages of this project as part of the YSSP 2021; Gunnlaugur Magnússon at Uppsala University and the University of Oslo for inspiring us with his vision and sharp insights on inclusive education; and Friederike Stock and Lutho Madala, Alumnae at Stockholm University, for their fresh perspective on enterprise modelling and coming along for the ride.