The arrival of the age when human activity has come to dominate and seriously compromise the stability of the Earth System poses fundamental questions for our cultural, social and economic institutions, our communities, and our systems of governance. Three decades of internationally coordinated research on the Earth system has led to the conclusion that Earth has entered a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene. Humanity will face a turbulent road of rapid and profound changes and uncertainties on route to a politically, socially and ecologically resilient society. The Anthropocene changes our relationship with the planet and the stability and resilience…

Humans are altering the planet, including long-term global geologic processes, at an increasing rate. Any formal recognition of an Anthropocene epoch in the geological time scale hinges on whether humans have changed the Earth system sufficiently to produce a stratigraphic signature in sediments and ice that is distinct from that of the Holocene epoch. Biologically, there is nothing remarkable in the fact that humans are agents of ecological change and environmental upset. All species transform their surroundings. The dizzying complexity of landscapes on Earth is not just a happy accident of geology and climate, but the result of billions of…

Targets on greenhouse gas emissions and transition towards renewable energy are ambitious. The generation of energy will be increasingly from variable renewables like wind and solar in all sizes, ranging from big offshore wind farms and large solar fields down to urban wind turbines on high rise buildings and rooftop solar panels at individual homes. Not only the diversity in generation capacity will increase but also the diversity in ownership from a few owners of big power plants in the past to a mix of numerous owners of smaller and dispersed generating plants today and tomorrow.

Urban complexity implies multiple dimensions of interactions over a vast range of phenomena governed for example by economic, physical, ecological and environmental aspects and political, health and educational systems. And of social aspects, cognitive and ethical intelligence like social economic status, equality, demographics, psychological and cognitive factors such as ideology, sexual identity. Ethical intelligence defined as the structural logic to survive, earn value, add value, acquire and manage knowledge and deal with the nature of reality. Revealing these full range of interactions between sets of these variables is difficult. Complex systems, at least theoretically could be a better way of…

Humanity is making tremendous progress. It’s the best time ever to be alive. Why does no one know it? Cities are a dense network of interconnected systems of increasing complexity, all of which use feedback information to exist in dynamic equilibrium. A new era of innovation for our urban future. A moment of recognition/realization

Over the past few decades an extensive literature has been published on the study of complex physical, biological and social systems. As complex systems tend to be generic and pervasive they differ from complicated  systems that are distinctive and specialized. Complex systems have some  generally accepted properties. Their structure spans several scales, constituents are interdependent and interact in  nonlinear ways. These interactions give rise to novel and emergent dynamics. The  combination of structure and emergence is viewed as self-organization.

In my lectures on robotics, AI and bioscience we not only focus on the ‘science’, but lately we deliberate on the range, growth and convergence of emerging technologies that unlock solutions to the most intractable problems, fueling new industries, and enabling massive disruption. The  convergence of artificial intelligence, robotics, AR/VR, synthetic biology, etc. are discussed and debated  and we are painting the implications and potential impact of these technologies across a wide range of disciplines, economy and industries. A multi-disciplinary picture of the future driven by these exponential technologies, as we are at an intersection in time where globalization, entrepreneurship,…

By definition, complex systems have many agents, but what makes it different from simply a large or complicated system is that the behavior of the system is not solely determined by the behavior of the agents, but also of the relationships between the agents. It has suites of interactivity, feedback loops and tipping points and emergent properties. These interdependencies increase the overall value (emergent value), may decrease the required investments. Complexity is the result of the interactions among the various agents, it can not be simplified without losing its essence.

Deep uncertainties veil our view of the future of our urban planet after 2050. Within this timeframe, the planet will face changes in migration, climate change, disruptions in financial systems, shifting energy supplies, and pandemics – these and more are complex enough on their own, let alone together. The cities of the future will be huge,  dense and the statistics paint a bleak future.

Although the burgeoning impact of robotics and autonomy has been evident for some time, we are now recognizing the rapidly accelerating emergence of robotics, artificial intelligence, and autonomy in our daily lives. Fossil records demonstrate the sudden appearance – about 542 million years ago – of complex animals with mineralized skeletal remains. Some describe this Cambrian Explosion as the most significant event in Earth’s evolutionary history, one that irreversibly changed the biosphere and led to a stunning diversity of body forms and types. Today, the impacts of robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomy – together with their derivatives, e.g., machine learning…