Spreadsheets are one of the most frequently used applications. They are used because they are easy to understand and values can be updated easily. However, many people try to use spreadsheets for problems beyond their intended scope and end up with errors and miscalculations. We present a new spreadsheet system which uses complex-values and equation code reuse to overcome the limitations of spreadsheets for complex problems. We also discuss the features necessary in order to make these enhancements useful and effective.

Many problems facing policymakers are complex and cannot be understood by reducing them to their component parts. However, many of the policy responses to complex problems continue to be based on simple, reductionist methods. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is one alternative method for informing policy that is well-suited to analyzing complex problems. ABM has practical implications for different stages of the policy process, such as testing alternatives, assisting with evaluation by setting up a counterfactual, and agenda setting. The objective of the research presented in this dissertation is to explore the opportunity for using ABM to examine complex problems of relevance for policy. To do so, three separate models were developed to investigate different aspects of food safety inspection systems. Complex problems involve interrelated feedback loops, many actors, exponential growth, asymmetric information, and uncertainty in outcomes and data, and food safety exhibits these traits, providing an interesting case study for the use of ABM. The first model explores three inspection scenarios incorporating access to information. The main finding was that the number of sick consumers is greatly reduced by giving consumers and inspectors more information about whether a retail outlet is contaminated, even if that information may be uncertain. The second model incorporated theories on risk and the role of transparency in encouraging consumer trust by giving consumers access to inspection scores. Overall, the findings were more nuanced: having access to restaurant inspection scores results in a slightly higher mean number of sick consumers, but less variation overall in the number of sick consumers. As well, a greater number of compliant restaurants results in fewer sick consumers. Rather than investigating the structure of the inspection system, the third model examines the potential for mobile technology to crowdsource information about suspected foodborne illness. This model illustrates the potential for health-oriented mobile technologies to improve the surveillance system for foodborne illness. Overall, the findings from the three models support using stylized ABMs to study various aspects of food safety inspection systems, and show that these models can be used to generate insight for policy choices and evidence-based decision making in this area.

As the nature of work significantly transforms over the next several decades, engineering students today will play a major role in building and developing society. Both industry and academia position critical thinking skills and problem-solving abilities as central to the growing needs of developed and developing societies. Consequently, engineers will be paid in the future to solve complex problems. ABET (2021) standards indicate these ill-structured problems or complex engineering problems involve multiple factors outside of standard building codes or equations. Complex or socioscientific problems have no obvious solution pathway, multiple perspectives, and require a well-reasoned and argued solution. Thus, ill-structured problems emerge from situated and societal contexts in which various aspects of the context or problem space are undefined, unspecified, uncertain, or as Chen et al. (2019) describe, 'fuzzy'. Novice learners struggle with the inherent uncertainty embedded at all stages of the problem-solving process. Students need opportunities to grapple with the challenges of real-world problems, including the inherent uncertainties associated with them. In problem-solving situations learners often reject or avoid uncertainty and associated feelings of discomfort because traditional education provides few opportunities to confront these uncertainties in problem solving. Evidence suggests uncertainty becomes a productive or constructive experience when learners are forced to express, contend, grapple with, argue, and negotiate how and what they know with others. Thus, generation of uncertainty, or productive uncertainty, in problem-solving situations facilitates management of ambiguity and complexity through argumentation to, in turn, foster well-informed, confidently argued and supported solutions. The purpose of this study was to develop a framework to guide designers/instructors to facilitate learning using argumentation as a pedagogical tool to manage uncertainty. / Doctor of Philosophy / Work is changing across industries, and students today will play a major role in building the world of tomorrow by solving complex problems. Therefore, industry and education position critical thinking and problem-solving skills as crucial to developing an innovative workforce to prosper in the future. Moreso, engineers will play a major role in using critical thinking and problem-solving skills to solve complex problems. Essentially, engineers will be paid to solve these pressing problems. Complex problems, also known as socioscientific problems, are extremely uncertain - having no apparent solution, requiring multiple perspectives, and arriving at a feasible solution under constraints. Additionally, complex problems are impacted by multiple effects associated with cultural and social contexts, making these problems increasingly more 'fuzzy' or uncertain. Because uncertainty is a key part of complex problem solving, students need chances to grapple with these problems and unavoidable uncertainty, which is too often avoided. Uncertainty creates feelings of discomfort which learners seek to avoid or reduce. However, evidence indicates uncertainty can also be used productively. If students can embrace or learn to work within uncertainty, they can learn to argue, negotiate, reason, and solve problems more effectively. The act of collaboratively arguing, reasoning, sharing perspective, or negotiating (argumentation as a process) holds promise as an overarching practice which allows students to confront and manage uncertainty in problem solving. Therefore, this study aimed to position argumentation as a teaching tool to foster and manage productive moments of uncertainty while solving complex problems. The study resulted in a taxonomy of uncertainty sources and management strategies, and cognitive guidelines for designers and educators to use argumentation as a process to promote and manage uncertainty while learning to solve complex problems.

Electronic commerce and the Internet have created demand for automated systems that can make complex decisions utilizing information from multiple sources. Because the information is uncertain, dynamic, distributed, and heterogeneous in nature, these systems require a great diversity of intelligent techniques including expert systems, fuzzy logic, neural networks, and genetic algorithms. However, in complex decision making, many different components or sub-tasks are involved, each of which requires different types of processing. Thus multiple such techniques are required resulting in systems called hybrid intelligent systems. That is, hybrid solutions are crucial for complex problem solving and decision making. There is a growing demand for these systems in many areas including financial investment planning, engineering design, medical diagnosis, and cognitive simulation. However, the design and development of these systems is difficult because they have a large number of parts or components that have many interactions. From a multi-agent perspective, agents in multi-agent systems (MAS) are autonomous and can engage in flexible, high-level interactions. MASs are good at complex, dynamic interactions. Thus a multi-agent perspective is suitable for modeling, design, and construction of hybrid intelligent systems. The aim of this thesis is to develop an agent-based framework for constructing hybrid intelligent systems which are mainly used for complex problem solving and decision making. Existing software development techniques (typically, object-oriented) are inadequate for modeling agent-based hybrid intelligent systems. There is a fundamental mismatch between the concepts used by object-oriented developers and the agent-oriented view. Although there are some agent-oriented methodologies such as the Gaia methodology, there is still no specifically tailored methodology available for analyzing and designing agent-based hybrid intelligent systems. To this end, a methodology is proposed, which is specifically tailored to the analysis and design of agent-based hybrid intelligent systems. The methodology consists of six models - role model, interaction model, agent model, skill model, knowledge model, and organizational model. This methodology differs from other agent-oriented methodologies in its skill and knowledge models. As good decisions and problem solutions are mainly based on adequate information, rich knowledge, and appropriate skills to use knowledge and information, these two models are of paramount importance in modeling complex problem solving and decision making. Follow the methodology, an agent-based framework for hybrid intelligent system construction used in complex problem solving and decision making was developed. The framework has several crucial characteristics that differentiate this research from others. Four important issues relating to the framework are also investigated. These cover the building of an ontology for financial investment, matchmaking in middle agents, reasoning in problem solving and decision making, and decision aggregation in MASs. The thesis demonstrates how to build a domain-specific ontology and how to access it in a MAS by building a financial ontology. It is argued that the practical performance of service provider agents has a significant impact on the matchmaking outcomes of middle agents. It is proposed to consider service provider agents' track records in matchmaking. A way to provide initial values for the track records of service provider agents is also suggested. The concept of ‘reasoning with multimedia information’ is introduced, and reasoning with still image information using symbolic projection theory is proposed. How to choose suitable aggregation operations is demonstrated through financial investment application and three approaches are proposed - the stationary agent approach, the token-passing approach, and the mobile agent approach to implementing decision aggregation in MASs. Based on the framework, a prototype was built and applied to financial investment planning. This prototype consists of one serving agent, one interface agent, one decision aggregation agent, one planning agent, four decision making agents, and five service provider agents. Experiments were conducted on the prototype. The experimental results show the framework is flexible, robust, and fully workable. All agents derived from the methodology exhibit their behaviors correctly as specified.

[pt] Este trabalho é o resultado de uma investigação das experiências e trocas entre o jovem oriundo de comunidades de baixa renda e o ambiente universitário. Partindo de questões relativas à interdisciplinaridade, no Laboratório de Investigação em Livre Desenho (LILD) /Núcleo de Estudo e Ação Sobre o Menor (NEAM). O Design é usado como ferramenta de abordagem das questões complexas e oportunidades derivadas da relação jovem com a universidade circunscrevendo uma tríade entre Design interdisciplinaridade e complexidades. A coleta de dados se deu através de entrevistas dos jovens envolvidos em parceria com o Núcleo de Estudo e Ação Sobre o Menor (NEAM) e o Laboratório de Investigação em Livre Desenho (LILD). É o Laboratório de Investigação em Livre Desenho que vem formando corpo no próprio envolvimento do professor e do jovem, o que faz a diferença para todos os envolvidos, onde o desenvolvimento está para o olhar e um objetivo concreto e que se transforma em diferentes escalas: vegetal, animal e biológica, vivendo assim, as suas próprias ações, tempos diferenças, nas escolhas do próprio caminho, uma aventura a que se dá através da mistura curiosidade dos saberes e fazeres. / [en] This work is the result of a research of the experiences and exchanges between the young people coming from low-income communities and the university environment. Starting from issues related to interdisciplinarity, debated in the course bodies Laboratório de Investigação em Livre Desenho (LILD) and NEAM. Design is used as tool to approach the complex matters and opportunities derived from the young and university relationship circumscribing a triad between Design, Interdisciplinarity and complexity. The data collected through interviews with young teenagers involved in the partnership with Núcleo de Estudo e Ação Sobre o Menor (NEAM). LILD as body of the University form a singular space of reference of studies involving teacher and the young, which make the difference for all surroundings. The development of concrete look and goal that transforms into variable scales: vegetable, animal and biological, living thus, their own actions, times, differences in the choice of their own way, an adventure that occurs through the mixture of curiosity of knowledge and doings.

Contemporary and future societies are facing a myriad of challenges, some of which are throwing into question the future viability of humanity on Planet Earth. These challenges are complex and systemic, and to solve them we must transition to more sustainable ways. Increasingly, researchers have a role to play in not only researching transitions but also facilitating transition through research design which postulates closer engagement in practical contexts and empowering actors of governance to identify pathways for transition. Transition management offers a framework for those interested in bringing about such transitionary potential through research, and potentially offers a tool for students interested in using their university work as a means to bring about transition. This study applies transition management framework using Kosovo’s forest governance as a case study asking the question: How can Kosovo transition towards more sustainable forest governance? The paper finds that forest governance in Kosovo is highly chaotic and inefficient. Issues of lack of capacity, competencies, expertise as well as knowledge are coupled with legal framework which does not allow for local ecological contexts nor local needs to produce a regime of governance subject to environmental degradation, corruption and contestation. Moreover, the absence of capacity on both central and local levels means that the regime configuration is very weak and malleable, and niches have potential to bring about transitions in regime configurations. For Kosovo, moreover, it finds that operative activities are not only possible but desirable, and that actors engaged in forest governance have good conditions and a receptive society for transition. None of the actors which participated in the study were happy with the situation and the need for change is well understood. The challenge for Kosovo is thus identified as how best to facilitate participation for transition, how best to balance centralised vs. decentralised governance, as well as how best to facilitate learning through both raising awareness and listening. These issues are found to be best pursued collectively with wide participation. It identifies three suggestions for transitions which are aimed at bolstering and streamlining existing niche innovations in Kosovo: i) participatory forest governance plans, ii) a forest community centre as well as iii) citizen science initiatives. Lastly, it reflects on the process of involved, participatory and complexity-oriented research to address complex issues, as well as the merit of transition management. It finds that whilst epistemologically diverse and more action-oriented research is important and productive for students of Sustainable Development, even necessary, the transition management framework is difficult to implement, cumbersome and possibly not possible for students. Whilst strategic, tactical and reflexive activities are possible, operative activities are more difficult and exposes the weak standing of students within the politics of environmental governance.

This study takes root in the emergence of new crowdsourcing techniques that have made it possible to solve business problems of complex nature by reaching outside of traditional organizational boundaries. While crowdsourcing is not a new concept, emerging technological trends such as Industry 4.0 and a growing interest by organizations to leverage the collective intelligence of online communities have made it an intriguing subject to study. The case study was conducted in USA, California at an established Swedish firm within the packaging industry. As opposed to traditional forms of crowdsourcing of repetitive and simple tasks, this study has an emphasis on complex problems with open-ended goals that often require iteration and expert skills to solve. The case project called Megatron relates to a packaging product developed to transport data servers for major technology companies in Silicon Valley. The product significantly differs in material and design compared with earlier packaging versions that have served the same purpose. Not only does it fold within its footprint when empty, to save space and gain logistical benefits, but it has a lightweight and robust material. The project development of this prototype of seemingly new features constituted a complex problem for the industrial firm that could be studied. Using innovation, problem types, speed and agility of the project as metrics and benchmarks to evaluate the potential of crowdsourcing, interviews and project documentation was gathered as empirical data. The empirics were then analyzed with the help of literature, theory and models that offered scope of crowdsourcing models for different purposes, and a relationship between problem types and innovation. The study indicated a strong willingness among company employees to integrate digital platforms and tools for experimentation and prototyping. Furthermore, the study identified paradoxes and drawbacks such as the malleability of complex problems. However, recommendations to deal with the uncertainty are provided as well, such as online reputation systems and peerreviewing tools to validate the quality of work. / Denna studie grundar sig i uppkomsten av nya crowdsourcing-tekniker som har gjort det möjligt att lösa affärsproblem av komplexa natur genom att nå utanför organisationens traditionella gränser. Även om crowdsourcing inte är ett nytt koncept har nya teknologiska trender som Industri 4.0 och ett ökat intresse från organisationer att dra nytta av kunskap från internetbaserade grupper och plattformar gjort det till ett intressant fall att studera. Fallstudien genomfördes i USA på ett väletablerat svenskt företag inom förpackningsindustring. Till skillnad från traditionella former av crowdsourcing av repetitiva och enkla uppgifter, fokuserar denna studie på komplexa problem med öppna mål, vilket ofta kräver iteration och expert-kompetens. Fallstudien om projektet Megatron avser en förpackningsprodukt utvecklad för att transportera dataservrar till globala teknikföretag i Silicon Valley. Projektet skiljer sig avsevärt i form av produktens material och design jämfört tidigare förpackningsversioner som tjänat samma syfte. Dels kan den vikas som tom för att spara utrymme, erhålla logistikfördelar som mindre koldioxidutsläpp och kostnad, och dels har den konkurrenskraftiga egenskaper som starkt och lätt material. Med utgångspunkt från projektet och produktens nya egenskaper klassas det i rapporten som ett komplext problem för industriföretaget. Innovation, kostnad och projektetstidsaspekt användes som mätvärden för att utvärdera möjligheterna kring crowdsourcing. Den empiriska datan inkluderade intervjuer och dokumentationen kring projektets olika faser. Empirin analyserades därefter med hjälp av litteratur, teorier och modeller som syftade till sambandet mellan problemtyper och innovation, samt hur dessa förhåller sig till crowdsourcing och företagets affärsvärde. Studien visar en stark vilja bland företagets anställda att integrera digitala plattformar och verktyg för experimentering och prototyputveckling. Vidare identifierade studien paradoxer såsom mycket förändringsbara egenskapen av komplexa problem I förhållande till innovation. Däremot presenterar arbetet rekommendationer för att hantera osäkerheten, exempelvis genom ryktesbaserade plattformar och och granskningsverktyg för att validera arbetens kvalitet.

No / Presents comprehensive descriptions of the most significant membrane computing tools developed for various models Describes the most relevant applications, facilitating a better understanding of how the tools are used in building, experimenting with and analysing membrane computing models of complex problems arising in robotics, automatic design of P systems, image processing, ecosystem modelling, systems and synthetic biology, and bioinformatics Discusses efficient software and hardware solutions, together with the algorithms and platforms used

Vår omvärld ses som alltmer komplex, hoten är mångfacetterade och spänner över alla domäner och konfliktnivåer. Underrättelsetjänsten är den funktion inom försvaret som särskilt ställs inför uppgiften att förstå och tolka komplexa problem, inte minst när den ska prognostisera händelseutvecklingar. I denna studie utgår vi från att komplexiteten kommer att öka och att det kommer att ställa hårdare krav på den militära underrättelsetjänsten. Syftet har varit att förstå hur medarbetare inom den militära underrättelsetjänsten idag ser på komplexa problem och vilka hinder och möjligheter som finns för att möta dem. Studien har sökt svar på hur underrättelsetjänsten kan utveckla sin förmåga att förstå komplexa problem. Denna studie har genomförts med kvalitativ metod baserat på en workshop och semistrukturerade intervjuer. Insamlade data har först analyserats utifrån de perspektiv som empirin lyft fram och därefter diskuterats med utgångspunkt i referensramen. Referensramen består av teorier och koncept inom komplexa underrättelseproblem, Sensemaking, kognitiva fallgropar och hur dom bemöts samt Militärt Designtänkande. Studiens resultat tyder på att det finns en god kunskap om komplexa problem generellt men att metoder, ledarskap, organisationskultur och den fysiska arbetsmiljön begränsar hanteringen av dem. Förmågan kan utvecklas genom att organisationen på ett tydligare vis definierar komplexa underrättelseproblem och anpassar arbetsmetoder efter dem. Vidare tyder resultatet på att den högre ledningsnivån inom organisationen samt uppdragsgivarna, försvarsmaktsledningen och Regeringskansliet, har en nyckelroll i de förändringar som krävs. Slutligen visar resultatet också på att Sensemaking och Militärt Designtänkande skulle kunna bidra till att öka förståelsen för och hanteringen av komplexa problem. / Our world is seen as increasingly complex, threats are multifaceted and span all domains and levels of conflict. The intelligence service is the function within the defense that is particularly faced with the task of understanding and interpreting complex problems, especially when it comes to forecast developments. In this study, we assume that the complexity will continually increase and that it will place stricter demands on the military intelligence service. The purpose has been to understand how coworkers in the military intelligence service today views complex problems and what obstacles and opportunities exist to meet them. The study has sought answers to how the intelligence service can develop its ability to understand complex problems. This study was conducted using a qualitative method based on a workshop and semi-structured interviews. The collected data has first been analyzed based on the perspectives highlighted by the empiric and then discussed based on the reference framework. The frame of reference consists of theories and concepts in complex intelligence problems, Sensemaking, cognitive pitfalls and military design thinking. The results of the study indicate that there is a good knowledge of complex problems in general, but that methods, leadership, organizational culture and the physical work environment limit their management. The ability can be developed by in a more explicit way define complex intelligence problems within the organization and adapt working methods to them. Furthermore, the results indicate that the higher management level within the organization, as well as the clients, the Swedish Armed Forces and the Government Offices, have a key role in the changes that are required. Finally, the results also show that Sensemaking and Military Design Thinking could contribute to further develop understanding and dealing with complex problems.

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