Many of today’s global challenges are beyond the capacity of any single actor.  Important problems in diverse policy domains, from environmental degradation to civil war, cut across many jurisdictions, unfold over long time periods, and exhibit vexing complexity.  Experience has shown that conventional approaches to these problems often fail.  

 

Our vision is to bring together political, commercial, social and scientific leaders to meet the challenges of complex policy issues.  Using traditional policy analysis and powerful new computational tools from the vanguard of mathematics and computer science, we intend to create a process by which urgent global issues can be understood and policy options explored, debated and negotiated.

 

The goal of the Atalaya Institute is to move beyond conventional solutions to global challenges.  We will deploy new and integrative ways of assembling and analyzing information.  Our negotiation process will be open and inclusive.  Our success will be measured by our contribution to robust, sustainable solutions to hard policy problems.

 

Our central activity will be to facilitate conversations among stakeholders and ultimately decision-makers, and to ground those conversations in computer simulation models based on the science of complexity to offer insight into the future consequences of current choices.   We will embed this modeling work in multi-stakeholder mediation and negotiation processes.  We envision a two-step process, which will take as its focus clearly defined policy conundrums.  

 

First, we will convene scholars and policy experts with diverse perspectives and deep technical knowledge to identify key questions and to consider how agent-based computational models can fill knowledge gaps.  Once key issues and modeling frameworks have been defined, we will bring stakeholders and then decision-makers into the process.  Our aim is to engage with individuals who exert substantial influence over outcomes.

 

The Institute will have no vested interest in a particular outcome. Our role will be that of an “honest broker” that bridges the gap between the scholarly world of policy analysis and computer modeling and the urgent demands of today’s complex policy problems.

 

Ultimately, we intend to engage policy issues around the world and in a variety of domains, including the environment, conflict resolution and poverty reduction.