Today, we know more about the universe than about our society. It's time to use the power of information to explore social and economic life on Earth and discover options for a sustainable future. Together, we can manage the challenges of the 21st century, combining the best of all knowledge. The FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator is a previously unseen multidisciplinary international scientific endeavour with focus on techno-socio-economic-environmental systems. The ultimate goal of the FuturICT flagship project is to understand and manage complex, global, socially interactive systems, with a focus on sustainability and resilience. Revealing the hidden laws and processes underlying societies probably constitutes the most pressing scientific grand challenge of our century and is equally important for the development of novel robust, trustworthy and adaptive information and communication technologies (ICT), based on socially inspired paradigms. We think that integrating ICT, Complexity Science and the Social Sciences will create a paradigm shift, facilitating a symbiotic co-evolution of ICT and society. Data from our complex globe-spanning ICT system will be leveraged to develop models of techno-socio-economic systems. In turn, insights from these models will inform the development of a new generation of socially adaptive, self-organized ICT systems.

1. Global Computing for Our Complex World
Steven Bishop (UK)
Dirk Helbing (CH)
Paul Lukowicz (D)
Vittoria Colizza (F)
Simon Buckingham Shum (UK)
Frank van Harmelen (NL)
A. Laszlo Barabasi (USA)

3. -­‐
Open
Calls
-­‐
Hilbert
Programs
Inspired
by
the
ATLAS-­‐Project
@
CERN:
3000
physicists
from
38
countries
and
174
universiHes
and
research
labs

4. FuturICT Platform
What for?
Global
ParHcipatory
PlaNorm
InnovaHon
Accelerator
Planetary
Living
Earth
What is?
Nervous
System
Simulator
What if?

5. FuturICT Platform
Global
ParHcipatory
PlaNorm
InnovaHon
Accelerator
Planetary
Living
Earth
What is?
Nervous
System
Simulator

6. The story so far...
• The Internet made any piece of digital, archival knowledge
instantly globally available, searchable, connected, easy to
correlate
• most complex artifact ever
created

7. The future...
• The Internet made any piece of digital, archival
knowledge instantly, globally available
• We are now at the verge of any real life event
becoming, instantly globally connected to the
digital domain

8. The future...
• The Internet made any piece of digital, archival
knowledge instantly, globally available
• We are now at the verge of any real life event
becoming, instantly globally connected to the
digital domain
– 20 Million videos per month on Facebook
– 152 Million blogs active in 2010
– 2 Billion mobile phone world wide
– 5 Billion Flickr photos
– 25 Billion Tweets in 2010

9. ‚Digital Shadow‘
• The Internet made any piece of digital, archival
knowledge instantly, globally available
• We are now at the verge of any real life event
becoming, instantly globally connected to the
digital domain
– 20 Million videos per month on Facebook
– 152 Million blogs active in 2010
– 2 Billion mobile phone world wide
– 5 Billion Flickr photos
– 25 Billion Tweets in 2010

10. Planetary Nervous System
- consumer confidence ?
- panic after earthquake ?
- ethnic tensions ?
- ………..
Planetary
Nervous
System
- consumer confidence statistics
- distribution of public anxiety
- sources and areas of tension
- ………..

11. Semantic Query Interpretation
- consumer confidence ?
interacHve
high,
level
queries
- panic after earthquake ?
- requiring
complex
semanHc
ethnic tensions ?
- ………..
interpretaHon
Planetary
Nervous
System
- consumer confidence statistics
- distribution of public anxiety
- sources and areas of tension
- ………..

12. Goal Driven Self Configuration
- consumer confidence ?
- panic after earthquake ?
- ethnic tensions ?
- ………..
Planetary
Nervous
System
high
level
goals
driven
dynamic
- consumer confidence statistics
self-­‐
configuraHon
- distribution of public anxiety
- sources and areas of tension
- ………..

13. Global Heterogeneous System
- consumer confidence ?
- panic after earthquake ?
- ethnic tensions ?
- ………..
-­‐ global
scope
-­‐ heterogenous
sources
-­‐ mulHple
temporal
and
spaHal
scales
Planetary
Nervous
System
- consumer confidence statistics
- distribution of public anxiety
- sources and areas of tension
- ………..

14. Privacy Respecting Reasoning
- consumer confidence ?
- panic after earthquake ?
- ethnic tensions ?
- ………..
Planetary
Nervous
privacy
respecHng,
distributed,
System
boSom
up
reasoning
- consumer confidence statistics
- distribution of public anxiety
- sources and areas of tension
- ………..

15. Global Social Awareness
- consumer confidence ?
- panic after earthquake ?
- ethnic tensions ?
- ………..
Planetary
Nervous
System
- consumer confidence statistics
- distribution of public anxiety
- sources and areas of tension
Painting by Maurits
Cornelis Escher
- ………..
incremental
construcHon,
of
“global
social-­‐
awareness”
like
internal
representaHon
of
the
world

16. FuturICT Platform
Global
ParHcipatory
PlaNorm
InnovaHon
Accelerator
Planetary
Living
Earth
Nervous
System
Simulator
What if?

17. "
Scenario Analysis with FuturICT’s Observatories:
Example of Epidemic Spreading
Data
Models Forecasts
demographic
infection
data
contact
network
models
transport
+
=
data
multi-
scale
geographic
models
...complexity...
data
agent-
based
models
scenario
predictions
analysis Validation
(thanks to Alex Vespignani)
priorities policies
Possibilities are limited, but even short-term prediction can be useful,
as weather forecasts or new traffic light controls show.

18. Modelling the global spread of H1N1,"
combining models of epidemiology and global travel

19. Building FuturICT’s Living Earth Simulator
§ Integrate existing models (traffic,
production, economic system, crowd
behavior, social cooperation, social
norms, social conflict, crime, war…)
§ Scale them up to global scale
§ Increase degree of detail, accuracy
(statistical and sensitivity analysis,
calibration, validation, identification of
crucial and questionable modeling
assumptions,…)

20. FuturICT Platform
What for?
Global
ParHcipatory
PlaNorm
InnovaHon
Accelerator
Planetary
Nervous
Living
Earth
Simulator
System

21. Participatory Engagement is Vital
PARTICIPATORY !
PARTICIPATORY !
—we’re talking about a
—we’re talking about
new PUBLIC GOOD, not
CITIZENS, not DNA or
the preserve of scientific or
the Higgs boson
political élites
Global
ParHcipatory
PlaNorm
PARTICIPATORY ! PARTICIPATORY !
— for crowdsourcing — to establish diversity
INNOVATION in science, for COLLECTIVE
ICT, services + behaviour
INTELLIGENCE

22. The Global Participatory Platform in action…
App
Developer
Toolkit
&
App
Store,
inc.
Commercial
So[ware/Services

23. The Global Participatory Platform in action…
Serious
Games
across
diverse
plaNorms

24. The Global Participatory Platform in action…
CiHzen
Science

25. The Global Participatory Platform in action…
VisualizaHon
Tools
for
all
abiliHes

26. The Global Participatory Platform in action…
Debate
PlaNorms
&
Argument
Maps

27. The Global Participatory Platform in action…
Thousands
of
‘long-­‐tail’
niche
Observatories
complemenHng
the
‘Big
Observatories’

28. The GPP will itself be studied as a complex, social system
Serious
Games
App
Developer
Toolkit
&
across
diverse
plaNorms
CiHzen
Science
App
Store,
inc.
Commercial
So[ware/Services
Global
ParHcipatory
Thousands
of
‘long-­‐tail’
PlaNorm
VisualizaHon
Tools
niche
Observatories
for
all
abiliHes
Debate
PlaNorms
&
Argument
Maps

29. Ultimately, all of this is about
accelerating European innovation
Global
ParHcipatory
PlaNorm
InnovaHon
Accelerator
Planetary
Nervous
Living
Earth
Simulator
System
FuturICT’s Innovation Accelerator

30. Innovation is not a pipeline…

31. (1) Innovation is an ecosystem

32. (2) Innovation is driven by platforms

33. FuturICT as an innovation platform
Global
ParHcipatory
PlaNorm
InnovaHon
Accelerator
Planetary
Nervous
Living
Earth
Simulator
System

34. Detect trends & innovation potential early on;
find best experts for projects
Current scientometrics results
have a 5 year delay
move this to near real time "
using alt-metrics

35. FuturICT as an innovation platform
Global
ParHcipatory
PlaNorm
InnovaHon
Accelerator
Planetary
Nervous
Living
Earth
Simulator
System

36. Establish new data publication platforms
• data sharing rates are < 10%
• platforms for sharing data
• think: "
life-science data for "
home-diagnostics start-up

37. FuturICT as an innovation platform
Global
ParHcipatory
PlaNorm
InnovaHon
Accelerator
Planetary
Nervous
Living
Earth
Simulator
System

38. From incentive to crowd funding
Research projects
Funded by small investors
Based on their value to communities

39. FuturICT as an innovation platform
Global
ParHcipatory
PlaNorm
InnovaHon
Accelerator
Planetary
Nervous
Living
Earth
Simulator
System

40. A New Era of Socio-Inspired Technology
New socially interactive ICT Better understanding, monitoring, "
enabled by complexity theory and management of global society
and novel social science
enabled by new ICT
influences
computer
complexity
social
science
science
science
influences
1. Collective awareness" 3. Society-inspired,
technology
self-organizing
2. Socially adaptive"
technology
technology