Approved for public release; distribution in unlimited. / This study analyzes the effective use of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the Navy's Surface Search and Control mission. In the future, the Navy hopes to leverage the capabilities of a family of UAVs to provide increased situational awareness in the maritime environment. This family of UAVs includes a Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) UAV and Vertical Take-Off UAVs (VTUAVs). The concepts of operations for how these UAVs work together have yet to be determined. Questions exist about the best number of UAVs, types of UAVs, and tactics that will provide increased capabilities. Through modeling and agent-based simulation, this study explores the validity of future UAV requirements and provides insights into the effectiveness of different UAV combinations. For the scenarios modeled, the best UAV combination is BAMS plus two or three VTUAVs. However, analysis shows that small numbers of VTUAVs can perform as well without BAMS as they do with BAMS. For combinations with multiple UAVs, BAMS proves to be a valuable asset that not only reduces the number of missed classifications, but greatly improves the amount of coverage on all contacts in the maritime environment. BAMS tactics have less effect than the mere presence of BAMS itself. / Lieutenant, United States Navy

NetLogo has become a standard platform for agent-based simulation, yet there appears to be widespread belief that it is not suitable for large and complex models due to slow execution. Our experience does not support that belief. NetLogo programs often do run very slowly when written to minimize code length and maximize clarity, but relatively simple and easily tested changes can almost always produce major increases in execution speed. We recommend a five-step process for quantifying execution speed, identifying slow parts of code, and writing faster code. Avoiding or improving agent filtering statements can often produce dramatic speed improvements. For models with extensive initialization methods, reorganizing the setup procedure can reduce the initialization effort in simulation experiments. Programming the same behavior in a different way can sometimes provide order-of-magnitude speed increases. For models in which most agents do nothing on most time steps, discrete event simulation—facilitated by the time extension to NetLogo—can dramatically increase speed. NetLogo’s BehaviorSpace tool makes it very easy to conduct multiple-model-run experiments in parallel on either desktop or high performance cluster computers, so even quite slow models can be executed thousands of times. NetLogo also is supported by efficient analysis tools, such as BehaviorSearch and RNetLogo, that can reduce the number of model runs and the effort to set them up for (e.g.) parameterization and sensitivity analysis.

As a consequence of global environmental change, sustainable management and governance of natural resources face critical challenges, such as dealing with non-linear dynamics, increased resource variability, and uncertainty. This thesis seeks to address some of these challenges by using simulation models. The first line of research focuses on the use of learning-by-doing (LBD) for managing a renewable resource, exemplified by a fish stock, and explores LBD in a theoretical model using artificial intelligence (Paper I and II). The second line of research focuses on the emergence of different forms of self-governance and their interrelation with the dynamics of trust among fishers when harvesting a shared resource, using an agent-based model. This model is informed by qualitative data based on small-scale fisheries in Mexico (Paper III and IV). Paper I and II find that the most sustainable harvesting strategy requires that the actor values current and future yields equally, cautiously experiments around what is perceived as the best harvest action, and rapidly updates its ‘mental model’ to any perceived change in catch. More specifically, Paper II reveals that understanding these aspects in relation to the type of change can yield not only increased performance, but also, and more importantly, increased robustness to both fast and slow changes in resource dynamics. However, when resource dynamics include the possibility of a more fundamental shift in system characteristics (a regime shift), LBD is problematic due to the potential for crossing a threshold, resulting in possible persistent reductions in harvests (Paper I). In Paper III, results indicate that cooperative forms of self-governance are more likely to establish and persist in communities where fishers’ have prior cooperative experience, fishers’ trustworthiness is more or less equal, and that this likelihood increases when resource availability fluctuates seasonally. Finally, to achieve a transformation toward more cooperative forms of self-governance, interventions are required that can strengthen both financial capital and trust among the members of the cooperatives (Paper IV). The unique contribution of this thesis lies in the method for ‘quantitatively’ studying LBD, the stylized model of a small-scale fishery, and the analysis of the two models to advance our understanding of processes of learning and self-governance in uncertain and variable social-ecological environments. Together, the results shed light on how social and ecological factors and processes co-evolve to shape social-ecological outcomes, as well as contributing to the development of novel methods within the emerging field of sustainability science. / I vårt antropocena tidevarv är ett långsiktigt förvaltarskap av naturresurser inom social-ekologiska system av yttersta vikt. Detta kräver en djup förståelse av människan, ekologin, interaktionerna sinsemellan och deras utveckling över tid. Syftet med denna avhandling är att nå en djupare och mer nyanserad förståelse kring två av grundpelarna inom forskningen av hållbar förvaltning av naturresurser–kontinuerligt lärande genom learning-by-doing (LBD) för att förstå naturresursens dynamik, samt vad som kan kallas socialt kapital, i detta sammanhang i betydelsen tillit mellan individer, som naturligtvis ligger till grund för framgångsrik gemensam förvaltning. Denna föresats operationaliseras genom att använda två olika simuleringsmodeller. Den ena modellen undersöker hur en hållbar förvaltning av en förnyelsebar resurs, i denna avhandling exemplifierad av en fiskepopulation, kan uppnås genom LBD. Den andra modellen söker blottlägga det komplexa sociala samspel som krävs för att praktisera gemensam förvaltning genom att använda ett fiskesamhälle som fallstudie. Tidigare forskning på båda dessa två områden är relativt omfattade. Emellertid har den forskning som specialiserat sig på LBD i huvudsak inskränkt sig till empiriska fallstudier. Vad som bryter ny mark i denna avhandling är att vi konstruerar en simuleringsmodell av LBD där vi kan studera lärandeprocessen i detalj för att uppnå en mer hållbar förvaltning över tid. Beträffande modellen som behandlar socialt kapital så har tidigare forskning fokuserat på hur en organisation, eller grupp, kan uppnå hållbar förvaltning. Dock saknas ett helhetsgrepp där som tar hänsyn till alla nivåer; från individnivå (mikro), via gruppnivå (meso), till samhällsnivå (makro). Detta är något som denna avhandling försöker avhjälpa genom att undersöka betydelsen av individers egenskaper, uppbyggnaden av socialt kapital, samt hur detta påverkar emergens av ett samhälle dominerat av mer kooperativa förvaltningsformer respektive mer hierarkiska diton. I papper I and II studeras kärnan av LBD som återkoppling mellan en aktör och en resurs, där aktören lär sig genom upprepade interaktioner med en resurs.  Resultaten visar att LBD är av avgörande betydelse för en hållbar förvaltning, speciellt då naturresursens dynamik är stadd i förändring. I den mest hållbara strategin bör aktören värdera nuvarande och framtida fångster lika högt, försiktigt experimentera kring vad aktören upplever som bästa strategi, för att sedan anpassa sin mentala modell till upplevda förändringar i fångst relativt dess insats någorlunda kraftigt. I papper III och IV behandlas uppbyggnaden av förtroende mellan individer och grupp, samt själv-organiserat styre. Genom att använda småskaligt fiske i Mexiko som en illustrativ fallstudie, utvecklades en agent-baserad modell av ett arketypiskt småskaligt fiskesamhälle. Resultaten indikerar att kooperativa förvaltningsformer är mer dominanta i samhällen där de som utför fisket har liknande pålitlighet, starkt gemensamt socialt kapital vid kooperativets start, och då resursen fluktuerar säsongsmässigt (papper III). Papper IV visar att för att uppnå en transformation från hierarkiska förvaltningsformer till kooperativa diton krävs interventioner som inriktar sig på både socialt och finansiellt kapital. Denna avhandling bidrar således till en djupare förståelse kring hur socialt kapital växer fram, samt hur mer strategiska LBD processer bör utformas när abrupta och osäkra förändringar i ekosystemen blir allt vanligare på grund av människans ökade tryck på planeten. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Submitted. Paper 3: Submitted. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-13T14:10:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Leonardo Yuji Tamura.pdf: 2018327 bytes, checksum: dca70d285f6272ea72951fe189bab096 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-22 / The aim of this work is to deepen the understanding of the process of adaptation of firms in the international environment. For such it relied on studies that faced the firm as a complex adaptive system and utilized the Stuart Kauffman s NK model. The NK model was originally conceived to study biological phenomena but has been applied by scholars in strategy and organizational studies since 1997. To enable the use of the NK model for the study of multinational firms, the model was extended to embrace specific international business concepts such as the gaining of competitive advantage in different countries from the adaptation of the firm s internal characteristics to the local environment. The chosen methodology is based on the paradigm of agent-based modeling and simulation. Accordingly, the firms were modeled as autonomous agents that search for the optimization of their competitive advantage by the means of the adaptation process. This approach allowed the study the emergent properties of the system from the agents interaction and behavior. The results of the simulation showed that gaining competitive advantage from the firm s attributes in different countries enabled the emergence of new viable organizational forms. It was also noted that one organizational form that does not provides optimal competitive advantage in a particular country may still be viable in a global context. Another result was the emergence of the complexity catastrophe, which is the degradation of the competitive advantage resulted from the addition of conflicting constraints. Such conflicting constraints are a result of the simultaneous optimization of the competitive advantage in many countries in many different ways due to the possibility of local adaptation. / O objetivo deste trabalho é aprofundar o entendimento sobre o processo de adaptação de empresas no ambiente internacional. Para isto foram utilizados estudos que encararam a empresa como um sistema adaptativo complexo e utilizaram o modelo NK de Stuart Kauffman. O modelo NK foi originalmente concebido para o estudo de fenômenos biológicos, mas vem sendo aplicado por acadêmicos em trabalhos de estratégia e organizações desde 1997. Para que fosse possível utilizar o modelo NK para o estudo de empresas multinacionais, o modelo foi estendido para abarcar conceitos específicos de negócios internacionais como, por exemplo, a obtenção de vantagem competitiva em diferentes países a partir da adaptação de caraterísticas internas da empresa ao ambiente local. A metodologia utilizada foi baseada no paradigma da modelagem e simulação baseado em agentes. Com base neste paradigma as empresas foram modeladas como agentes autônomos que, por meio de um processo de adaptação buscam otimizar sua vantagem competitiva. Esta abordagem permite estudar propriedades emergentes do sistema a partir da interação e do comportamento dos agentes. Os resultados das simulações mostraram que a obtenção de vantagem competitiva a partir dos atributos organizacionais da empresa em diversos países possibilita o surgimento de novas formas organizacionais viáveis. Também se observou que uma forma organizacional que não propicia vantagem competitiva ótima em um país específico, ainda pode ser viável num contexto global. Outro resultado obtido foi a emergência da catástrofe da complexidade, que é a degradação da vantagem competitiva em decorrência da adição de restrições conflitantes. Tais restrições conflitantes são resultado da necessidade de otimizar simultaneamente a vantagem competitiva em diversos países de diversas formas diferentes devido à possibilidade de adaptação local.

Higher Education Institutions are spaces for planning strategies deployment and sustainable best practices implementation in teaching, research, outreach, management and operations, behaving as a role model to society. The innovation of this work relies on deploying tools to aid waste management decision-making, considering that higher education institutions community are potential sustainability agent promoters, and that strategies to integrate HEIs educational dimension with engagement, operational, and policy & management dimensions, is this works innovation from other frameworks already deployed. It is important to understand that HEIs, different than other institutions, have the obligation to build knowledge and to train its community to serve society. HEIs responsibility to prepare new leaders, given the opportunity for raising awareness and sustainable culture by engaging its community in daily activities, by preparing them to see daily challenges and solve it through more sustainable approaches. This works tools were deployed using social sciences, engineering, and computational modeling interfaces. This thesis products are a literature review regard solid waste management at Higher Education Institutions; The description of the solid waste management at University of São Paulo &#8211; São Carlos Campus, a study describing strengthening and weakening factors for the University of São Paulo Recicla recycle program; A framework for solid waste management at Higher Education Institutions; The use of survey as a tool to assess culture of sustainability at the University of São Paulo &#8211; São Carlos Campus; The Waste Management Index for Brazilian Higher Education Institutions; and the use of Agent-Based Modeling methodology as a decision-making tool for recycling initiatives. The main conclusions are that there is a gap on tools to help decision-making regard solid waste management and that consider higher education institutions specificities, this lead to creation of tools to address these necessities. By working to deploy tools with social sciences and engineering interfaces, researchers can find an innovative, rich, and barely exploited field. / Instituições de ensino superior são espaços para implantação de estratégias de planejamento e melhores práticas sustentáveis no ensino, pesquisa, extensão, gerenciamento e operações, comportando-se como modelo para a sociedade. A inovação deste trabalho baseia-se na elaboração e implantação de ferramentas para auxiliar na tomada de decisão referente a gerenciamento de resíduos, considerando que a comunidade de instituições de ensino superior são potenciais agentes promotores de sustentabilidade. Além disso, estratégias para integrar a dimensão educacional das IES com o engajamento, as dimensões operacional e de políticas e gestão é o que diferencia o modelo aqui proposto de outros modelos existentes. É importante entender que as IES, diferentes das outras instituições, têm a obrigação de construir conhecimento e treinar sua comunidade para servir a sociedade. A responsabilidade da IES em preparar novos líderes, tem a oportunidade de aumentar a conscientização e a cultura sustentável, envolvendo sua comunidade nas atividades diárias, preparando-as para ver desafios diários e resolvê-lo através de abordagens mais sustentáveis. As ferramentas foram elaboradas usando interfaces de ciências sociais, engenharia e modelagem computacional. Os produtos desta tese são: A revisão da literatura sobre o gerenciamento de resíduos sólidos nas Instituições de Ensino Superior; A descrição da gestão de resíduos sólidos no campus da Universidade de São Paulo - São Carlos, um estudo que descreve os fatores de fortalecimento e fragilização do programa de reciclagem de Recicla da Universidade de São Paulo; Um modelo para a gestão de resíduos sólidos nas Instituições de Ensino Superior; O uso da questionários como ferramenta para avaliar a cultura de sustentabilidade na Universidade de São Paulo - Campus de São Carlos; O Índice de Gestão de Resíduos Sólidos para Instituições de Ensino Superior Brasileiras; e O uso da metodologia de modelagem baseada em agentes como uma ferramenta de tomada de decisão para iniciativas de reciclagem. As principais conclusões são que há uma lacuna em ferramentas para ajudar a tomada de decisão em relação ao gerenciamento de resíduos sólidos e que consideram as especificidades das instituições de ensino superior, o que leva à criação de ferramentas para atender a essas necessidades. Trabalhando para implantar ferramentas com interface entre as ciências sociais, engenharia, e modelagem computacional os pesquisadores puderam trabalhar em um campo inovador, rico e pouco explorado.

Le diagnostic et la prise en charge des infections ostéo-articulaires (IOA) sont souvent complexes occasionnant une perte osseuse irréversible. La variabilité intra et inter-patient en terme de présentation clinique rend impossible le recours à une description systématique ou à une analyse statistique pour le diagnostic et l'étude de cette pathologie. Le développement d'IOA résulte d'interactions complexes entre les mécanismes cellulaires et moléculaires du tissu osseux et les bactéries. L'objectif de cette thèse est de modéliser l'IOA afin de simuler le comportement du système suite à des interactions au niveau cellulaire et moléculaire en utilisant l'approche de modélisation à base d'agents. Nous avons utilisé une méthode basée sur l'analyse bibliographique pour extraire les caractéristiques du modèle et les utiliser pour deux aspects. Le premier consiste en l'élaboration de la structure du modèle en identifiant les agents et les interactions, et le deuxième concerne l'estimation quantitative des différents paramètres du modèle. La réponse du système BJI aux différentes tailles d’inoculum bactérien a été simulée par la variation de différents paramètres. L'évolution des agents simulés a ensuite été analysée en utilisant une modélisant par des systèmes dynamiques non linéaires et une méthodologie "Datadriven", grâce auxquelles nous avons décrit le système d'IOA et identifié des relations plausibles entre les agents. Le modèle a réussi à présenter la dynamique des bactéries, des cellules immunitaires innées et des cellules osseuses au cours de la première étape de l'IOA et pour différentes tailles d'inoculum bactérien. La simulation a mis en évidence les conséquences sur le tissu osseux résultant du processus de remodelage osseux au cours de l'IOA. Ces résultats peuvent être considérés comme une base pour une analyse plus approfondie et pour la proposition de différentes hypothèses et scénarios de simulation qui pourraient être étudiés dans ce laboratoire virtuel. / Bone and joint infections are one of the most challenging bone pathologies that associated with irreversible bone loss and long costly treatment. The high intra and inter patient's variability in terms of clinical presentation makes it impossible to rely on the systematic description or classical statistical analysis for its diagnosis or studying. The development of BJI encompasses a complex interplay between the cellular and molecular mechanisms of the host bone tissue and the infecting bacteria. The objective of this thesis is to provide a novel computational modeling framework that simulates the behavior resulting from the interactions on the cellular and molecular levels to explore the BJI dynamics qualitatively and comprehensively, using an agent-based modeling approach. We relied on a meta-analysis-like method to extract the quantitative and qualitative data from the literature and used it for two aspects. First, elaborating the structure of the model by identifying the agents and the interactions, and second estimating quantitatively the different parameters of the model. The BJI system’s response to different microbial inoculum sizes was simulated with respect to the variation of several critical parameters. The simulation output data was then analyzed using a data-driven methodology and system dynamics approach, through which we summarized the BJI complex system and identified plausible relationships between the agents using differential equations. The BJI model succeeded in imitating the dynamics of bacteria, the innate immune cells, and the bone cells during the first stage of BJI and for different inoculum size in a compatible way. The simulation displayed the damage in bone tissue as a result of the variation in bone remodeling process during BJI. These findings can be considered as a foundation for further analysis and for the proposition of different hypotheses and simulation scenarios that could be investigated through this BJI model as a virtual lab.

The continuous progression of urbanization has resulted in an increasing number of people living in cities or towns. In parallel, advancements in technologies, such as the Internet, telecommunications, and transportation, have allowed for better connectivity among people. This has engendered drastic changes in urban systems during the recent decades. From a social geographic perspective, the changes in urban systems are primarily characterized by intensive contacts among people and their interactions with the surrounding urban environment, which further leads to subsequent challenging problems such as traffic jams, environmental pollution, urban sprawl, etc. These problems have been reported to be heterogeneous and non-deterministic. Hence, to cope with them, massive amounts of geographic data are required to create new knowledge on urban systems. Due to the thriving of Volunteer Geographic Information (VGI) in recent years, this thesis presents knowledge on urban systems based on extensive VGI datasets from three sources: highway dataset from the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project, photo location dataset from the Flickr website, and GPS tracking datasets from volunteers, taxicabs, and air flights. The knowledge primarily relates to two issues of urban systems: the urban space and the corresponding human dynamics. In accordance, on one hand, urban space acts as a carrier for associated geographic activities and knowledge of it benefits our understanding of current social and economic problems in urban systems. On the other hand, human dynamics reflect human behavior in urban space, which leads to complex mobility or activity patterns. Its investigation allows a derivation of the underlying driving force that is very instructive to urban planning, traffic management, and infectious disease control. Therefore, to fully understand the two issues, this thesis conducts a thorough investigation from multiple aspects. The first issue is investigated from four aspects. First, at the city level, the controversial topic of city size regularity is investigated in terms of natural cities, and the conclusion is that Zipf’s law holds stably for all US cities. Second, at the sub-city level, the size distribution of spatial units within different cities in terms of the clusters formed by street nodes, photo locations, and taxi static points are explored, and the result shows a remarkable scaling property of these spatial units. Third, enlightened by the scaling property of the urban space at the city or sub-city level, this thesis devises a novel tool that can demarcate the cities into three categories: compact cities, normal cities, and sprawling cities. The tool is then applied to cities in both the US and three European countries. In the last, another representation of urban space is taken into account, namely the transportation network. The findings report that the US airport network displays the properties of scale-free, small-world, and disassortative mixing and that the individual natural airports show heterogeneous patterns that are probably subject to geographic constraints and socioeconomic factors. The second issue is examined from four perspectives. First, at the city level, the movement flow contributed by agents using two types of behavior is investigated through an agent-based simulation, and the result conjectures that the human mobility behavior is mainly shaped by the underlying street network. Second, at the country level, this thesis reports that the human travel length by air can be approximated well by an exponential distribution, and subsequent simulations indicate that human mobility behavior is largely constrained by the underlying airport network. Third, at the regional level, the length that humans travel by car is demonstrated to agree well with a power law with exponential cutoff distribution, and subsequent simulation further reproduces this levy flight characteristic. Based on the simulation, human mobility behavior is again revealed to be primarily shaped by the underlying hierarchical spatial structure. Finally, taxicab static points are adopted to explore human activity patterns, which can be characterized as the regularities in space and time, the heterogeneity and predictability in space. From a complex system perspective, this thesis presents the knowledge discovered in urban systems using massive volumes of geographic data. Together with new knowledge from empirical findings, the development of methods, and the design of theoretic models, this thesis also shares the research community with geographic data generated from extensive VGI datasets and the corresponding source codes. Moreover, this study is aligned with a paradigm shift in that it analyzes large-size datasets using high processing power as opposed to analyzing small-size datasets with low processing power. / <p>QC 20121113</p>

A system of systems (SoS) framework is proposed for policy design that takes into account the value systems of multiple participants, harnesses the complexity of strategic interactions among participants, and confronts the risks and uncertainties present in participants’ decision making. SoS thinking provides an integrative and adaptive mindset, which is needed to tackle policy challenges characterized by conflict, complexity, and uncertainty. With the aim of putting SoS thinking into practice, operational methods and tools are presented herein. Specifically, SoS engineering methodologies to create value system models, agent-based models of competitive and cooperative behaviour under conflict, and risk management models are developed and integrated into the framework. The proposed structure, methods and tools can be utilized to organize policy design discourse. Communication among participants involved in the policy discussion is structured around SoS models, which are used to integrate multiple perspectives of a system and to test the effectiveness of policies in achieving desirable outcomes under varying conditions. In order to demonstrate the proposed methods and tools that have been developed to enliven policy design discourse, a theoretical common-pool resources dilemma is utilized. The generic application illustrates the methodology of constructing ordinal preferences from values. Also, it is used to validate the agent-based modeling and simulation platform as a tool to investigate strategic interactions among participants and harness the potential to influence and enable participants to achieve desirable outcomes. A real-world common pool resources dilemma in the provisioning and security considerations of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore is examined and employed as a case study for applying strategic conflict models in risk management. Overall, this thesis advances the theory and application of SoS engineering and focuses on understanding value systems, handling complexity in terms of conflict dynamics, and finally, enhancing risk management.

A system of systems (SoS) framework is proposed for policy design that takes into account the value systems of multiple participants, harnesses the complexity of strategic interactions among participants, and confronts the risks and uncertainties present in participants’ decision making. SoS thinking provides an integrative and adaptive mindset, which is needed to tackle policy challenges characterized by conflict, complexity, and uncertainty. With the aim of putting SoS thinking into practice, operational methods and tools are presented herein. Specifically, SoS engineering methodologies to create value system models, agent-based models of competitive and cooperative behaviour under conflict, and risk management models are developed and integrated into the framework. The proposed structure, methods and tools can be utilized to organize policy design discourse. Communication among participants involved in the policy discussion is structured around SoS models, which are used to integrate multiple perspectives of a system and to test the effectiveness of policies in achieving desirable outcomes under varying conditions. In order to demonstrate the proposed methods and tools that have been developed to enliven policy design discourse, a theoretical common-pool resources dilemma is utilized. The generic application illustrates the methodology of constructing ordinal preferences from values. Also, it is used to validate the agent-based modeling and simulation platform as a tool to investigate strategic interactions among participants and harness the potential to influence and enable participants to achieve desirable outcomes. A real-world common pool resources dilemma in the provisioning and security considerations of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore is examined and employed as a case study for applying strategic conflict models in risk management. Overall, this thesis advances the theory and application of SoS engineering and focuses on understanding value systems, handling complexity in terms of conflict dynamics, and finally, enhancing risk management.

Higher Education Institutions are spaces for planning strategies deployment and sustainable best practices implementation in teaching, research, outreach, management and operations, behaving as a role model to society. The innovation of this work relies on deploying tools to aid waste management decision-making, considering that higher education institutions community are potential sustainability agent promoters, and that strategies to integrate HEIs educational dimension with engagement, operational, and policy & management dimensions, is this works innovation from other frameworks already deployed. It is important to understand that HEIs, different than other institutions, have the obligation to build knowledge and to train its community to serve society. HEIs responsibility to prepare new leaders, given the opportunity for raising awareness and sustainable culture by engaging its community in daily activities, by preparing them to see daily challenges and solve it through more sustainable approaches. This works tools were deployed using social sciences, engineering, and computational modeling interfaces. This thesis products are a literature review regard solid waste management at Higher Education Institutions; The description of the solid waste management at University of São Paulo &#8211; São Carlos Campus, a study describing strengthening and weakening factors for the University of São Paulo Recicla recycle program; A framework for solid waste management at Higher Education Institutions; The use of survey as a tool to assess culture of sustainability at the University of São Paulo &#8211; São Carlos Campus; The Waste Management Index for Brazilian Higher Education Institutions; and the use of Agent-Based Modeling methodology as a decision-making tool for recycling initiatives. The main conclusions are that there is a gap on tools to help decision-making regard solid waste management and that consider higher education institutions specificities, this lead to creation of tools to address these necessities. By working to deploy tools with social sciences and engineering interfaces, researchers can find an innovative, rich, and barely exploited field. / Instituições de ensino superior são espaços para implantação de estratégias de planejamento e melhores práticas sustentáveis no ensino, pesquisa, extensão, gerenciamento e operações, comportando-se como modelo para a sociedade. A inovação deste trabalho baseia-se na elaboração e implantação de ferramentas para auxiliar na tomada de decisão referente a gerenciamento de resíduos, considerando que a comunidade de instituições de ensino superior são potenciais agentes promotores de sustentabilidade. Além disso, estratégias para integrar a dimensão educacional das IES com o engajamento, as dimensões operacional e de políticas e gestão é o que diferencia o modelo aqui proposto de outros modelos existentes. É importante entender que as IES, diferentes das outras instituições, têm a obrigação de construir conhecimento e treinar sua comunidade para servir a sociedade. A responsabilidade da IES em preparar novos líderes, tem a oportunidade de aumentar a conscientização e a cultura sustentável, envolvendo sua comunidade nas atividades diárias, preparando-as para ver desafios diários e resolvê-lo através de abordagens mais sustentáveis. As ferramentas foram elaboradas usando interfaces de ciências sociais, engenharia e modelagem computacional. Os produtos desta tese são: A revisão da literatura sobre o gerenciamento de resíduos sólidos nas Instituições de Ensino Superior; A descrição da gestão de resíduos sólidos no campus da Universidade de São Paulo - São Carlos, um estudo que descreve os fatores de fortalecimento e fragilização do programa de reciclagem de Recicla da Universidade de São Paulo; Um modelo para a gestão de resíduos sólidos nas Instituições de Ensino Superior; O uso da questionários como ferramenta para avaliar a cultura de sustentabilidade na Universidade de São Paulo - Campus de São Carlos; O Índice de Gestão de Resíduos Sólidos para Instituições de Ensino Superior Brasileiras; e O uso da metodologia de modelagem baseada em agentes como uma ferramenta de tomada de decisão para iniciativas de reciclagem. As principais conclusões são que há uma lacuna em ferramentas para ajudar a tomada de decisão em relação ao gerenciamento de resíduos sólidos e que consideram as especificidades das instituições de ensino superior, o que leva à criação de ferramentas para atender a essas necessidades. Trabalhando para implantar ferramentas com interface entre as ciências sociais, engenharia, e modelagem computacional os pesquisadores puderam trabalhar em um campo inovador, rico e pouco explorado.