Santa Fe Institute

Realizing the Potential of Community-Led, Science-Driven Participatory Complex Systems Modeling

The video features Dr. Moira Zellner’s presentation on community‑led, science‑driven participatory modeling for socio‑ecological challenges such as climate hazards and urban planning. She frames the approach as the third stage of reasoning about complex systems, where stakeholders move beyond merely acknowledging complexity to co‑creating models and exploring intervention trade‑offs. Zellner outlines three reasoning stages: recognizing complexity, analyzing it with traditional tools, and finally engaging stakeholders in participatory modeling. She argues that without stakeholder involvement, models remain abstract and decision‑making stays disconnected from lived experience. The framework emphasizes simple yet realistic models, rapid scenario testing, and visualizations that surface diverse values and priorities. A memorable quote from the talk is, “We have to go at the speed of trust,” underscoring the need for relationship‑building before technical work can succeed. Zellner demonstrates a prototype platform that lets users assign weighted concerns, collaborate on a shared map, and run flood‑risk simulations with green‑infrastructure interventions. The demo shows how different stakeholder groups—public officials, hydrologists, residents—prioritize investment, infiltration, or runoff differently, and how the tool visualizes those divergent outcomes. The implications are clear: participatory modeling can democratize scientific insight, improve the durability of urban‑planning decisions, and foster collective learning. However, scaling the approach requires sustained funding, interdisciplinary facilitation skills, and institutional willingness to adopt simpler, more transparent models.