Computer predictions for nature and society – Should they be trusted?

Conference flyer and application form

A flyer for the conference including a schedule and application form is available as a pdf.

The deadline for applications to present at the conference are now passed, however, registration to be an audience member is still open.

2008 Meeting Schedule

We are pleased to announce the 2008 NANIA General Meeting, supported by SUPA entitled Computer predictions for nature and society – Should they be trusted? taking place in Edinburgh, September 11-12 2008.

The event begins with a one-day public meeting at the Royal Society of Edinburgh featuring four prestigious speakers and panel discussions and will be followed by a one day academic conference at the University of Edinburgh. The closing date for applications has now passed. A provisional schedule is available below.

Public meeting

• Venue: Royal Society of Edinburgh, 22-24 George St, Edinburgh.
• Date: September 11 2008
• Cost: £50 (£30 concessions)
• Application information: to be announced
• Map:
  

General background

Computer simulations have long been used by scientists and engineers to help design better materials and machines. Increasingly computers are being used to predict the future for natural and social processes, such as epidemics, climate change, economic forecasting and earthquakes. Why should these predictions be trusted, given the complexity of these systems and the many unknown variables involved? Should government policy be based on them? We have gathered together four leading computer modellers to present their views, and defend them in panel discussions. Since the consequences of their findings may affect us all, we will invite the audience to enter the debate by putting questions to two expert panels.

The day is divided into two sessions, each with two talks and a panel discussion.

Session I: "Society"

• Speaker: Professor Neil Johnson (University of Miami, Florida)
• Two's Company – Three is Complexity: Traffic jams, stock market crashes and war
• Neil Johnson studies collective behavior and emergent properties in a wide range of real-world Complex Systems: from the spread of real and computer viruses, group dynamics and herd behaviour in financial markets through to quantum entanglement in nanostructures. Neil presented the televised 175th Royal Institution Christmas Lectures entitled "Arrow of Time" in 1999 and his book "Two's Company, Three is Complexity" was published this year.
• Speaker: Professor Christl Donnelly (Imperial College London)
• How should politicians react when an epidemic breaks out?
• Christl Donnelly builds statistical and biomathematical methods for the analysis of epidemiological patterns of infectious diseases. Her computer analyses guided government policy during the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak, and she has tested the effectiveness of badger culling in preventing tuberculosis in cattle.

Session II: "The Earth"

• Speaker: Professor Leonard Smith (London School of Economics & Oxford University)
• The human consequences of climate change
• Lenny Smith is Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Time Series at London School of Economics, with extensive interests ranging from economics to meteorology, linked by chaos theory, the subject of his recent book "Chaos: A Very Short Introduction".
• Speaker: Professor Peter Cox (University of Exeter)
• How can we predict the climate when we can't predict the weather?
• Peter Cox holds the Met Office Chair in Climate System Dynamics at Exeter, having previously been the Science Director for Climate Change at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. As lead-author of a chapter of the IPCC Fourth Assessment report on Climate Change, and with frequent appearances on TV, he is one of the UK's best-known scientific and popular climate-change experts. His special expertise lies in interactions between the climate and life, and feedbacks in the carbon cycle.

Academic Conference on fundamental approaches to evolving and self-organising systems

• Venue: University of Edinburgh.
  Old Infirmary, Room 2.13, Drummond Street.
• Date: September 12
• Cost: £120 (includes public meeting); bursaries covering the full fee are available for SUPA students.
• Application information: the application deadline has now passed.
• Map:
  

The meeting will feature presentations from members of the NANIA collaboration on recent developments in techniques for and analysis of models in ecological, biological, earth and social sciences. A limited number of contributions from other scientists working in these areas will be presented by participants.

Outline Schedule

The closing date for applications has now passed. A schedule for the meeting is available as a PDF.