As climate change and human migration accelerate globally, decision-makers are seeking tools that can deepen their understanding of the complex nexus between climate change and human migration. These tools can help to identify populations under pressure to migrate, and to explore proactive policy options and adaptive measures. Given the complexity of factors influencing migration, this article presents a system dynamics-based model that couples migration decision making and behavior with the interacting dynamics of economy, labor, population, violence, governance, water, food, and disease. The regional model is applied here to the test case of migration within and beyond Mali. The study explores potential systems impacts of a range of proactive policy solutions and shows that improving the effectiveness of governance and increasing foreign aid to urban areas have the highest potential of those investigated to reduce the necessity to migrate in the face of climate change.
In August 2017, Sandia convened five workshops to explore the future of advanced technologies and global peace and security through the lenses of deterrence, information, innovation, nonproliferation, and population and Earth systems.
The purpose of the scenarios workshop held for the Civilian Nuclear component of the Global Nuclear Assured Security Mission Integration Initiative was to identify sources of risk in the global civilian nuclear enterprise. The risks identified are inadequately addressed through current technical measures, regulatory frameworks and institutions and should be considered for further research. The workshop participants also developed four high level scenarios describing different sequences of events that could result in radiological releases, widespread loss of electric power, and loss of public confidence in segments of the nuclear industry. The scenarios are intended for further analysis and as the basis for simulation exercises.
This report provides an overview of the scenarios used in strategic futures workshops conducted at Sandia on September 21 and 29, 2016. The workshops, designed and facilitated by analysts in Center 100, used scenarios to enable thought leaders to think collectively about the changing aspects of global nuclear security and the potential implications for the US Government and Sandia National Laboratories.
This study examines the structure and impact of state-funded technology maturation programs that leverage research institutions for economic development throughout the United States. The lessons learned and practices identified from previous experiences will inform Sandia National Laboratories' Government Relations and Technology Partnerships teams as they participate in near-term discussions about the proposed Technology Readiness Gross Receipts Tax Credit and Program, and continue to shape longer-term program and partnership opportunities. This Page Intentionally Left Blank
The Integrated Human Futures Project provides a set of analytical and quantitative modeling and simulation tools that help explore the links among human social, economic, and ecological conditions, human resilience, conflict, and peace, and allows users to simulate tradeoffs and consequences associated with different future development and mitigation scenarios. In the current study, we integrate five distinct modeling platforms to simulate the potential risk of social unrest in Egypt resulting from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile in Ethiopia. The five platforms simulate hydrology, agriculture, economy, human ecology, and human psychology/behavior, and show how impacts derived from development initiatives in one sector (e.g., hydrology) might ripple through to affect other sectors and how development and security concerns may be triggered across the region. This approach evaluates potential consequences, intended and unintended, associated with strategic policy actions that span the development-security nexus at the national, regional, and international levels. Model results are not intended to provide explicit predictions, but rather to provide system-level insight for policy makers into the dynamics among these interacting sectors, and to demonstrate an approach to evaluating short- and long-term policy trade-offs across different policy domains and stakeholders. The GERD project is critical to government-planned development efforts in Ethiopia but is expected to reduce downstream freshwater availability in the Nile Basin, fueling fears of negative social and economic impacts that could threaten stability and security in Egypt. We tested these hypotheses and came to the following preliminary conclusions. First, the GERD will have an important short-term impact on water availability, food production, and hydropower production in Egypt, depending on the short- term reservoir fill rate. Second, the GERD will have a very small impact on water availability in the Nile Basin over the longer term. Depending on the GERD fill rate, short-term (e.g., within its first 5 years of operation) annual losses in Egyptian food production may peak briefly at 25 percent. Long-term (e.g., 15 to 30 year) cumulative losses in Egypt's food production may be less than 3 percent regardless of the fill rate, with the GERD having essentially no impact on projected annual food production in Egypt about 25 years after opening. For the quick fill rates, the short-term losses may be sufficient to create an important decrease in overall household health among the general population, which, along with other economic stressors and different strategies employed by the government, could lead to social unrest. Third, and perhaps most importantly, our modeling suggests that the GERD's effect on Egypt's food and water resources is small when compared to the effect of projected Egyptian population and economic growth (and the concomitant increase in water consumption). The latter dominating factors are exacerbated in the modeling by natural climate variability and may be further exacerbated by climate change. Our modeling suggests that these growth dynamics combine to create long-term water scarcity in Egypt, regardless of the Ethiopian project. All else being equal, filling strategies that employ slow fill rates for the GERD (e.g., 8 to 13 years) may mitigate the risks in future scenarios for Egypt somewhat, but no policy or action regarding the GERD is likely to significantly alleviate the projected water scarcity in Egypt's Nile Basin. However, general beliefs among the Egyptian populace regarding the GERD as a major contributing factor for scarcities in Egypt could make Ethiopia a scapegoat for Egyptian grievances -- contributing to social unrest in Egypt and generating undesirable (and unnecessary) tension between these two countries. Such tension could threaten the constructive relationships between Egypt and Ethiopia that are vital to maintaining stability and security within and between their respective regional spheres of influence, Middle East and North Africa, and the Horn of Africa.
Developing nations incur a greater risk to climate change than the developed world due to poorly managed human/natural resources, unreliable infrastructure and brittle governing/economic institutions. These vulnerabilities often give rise to a climate induced “domino effect” of reduced natural resource production-leading to economic hardship, social unrest, and humanitarian crises. Integral to this cascading set of events is increased human migration, leading to the “spillover” of impacts to adjoining areas with even broader impact on global markets and security. Given the complexity of factors influencing human migration and the resultant spill-over effect, quantitative tools are needed to aid policy analysis. Toward this need, a series of migration models were developed along with a system dynamics model of the spillover effect. The migration decision models were structured according to two interacting paths, one that captured long-term “chronic” impacts related to protracted deteriorating quality of life and a second focused on short-term “acute” impacts of disaster and/or conflict. Chronic migration dynamics were modeled for two different cases; one that looked only at emigration but at a national level for the entire world; and a second that looked at both emigration and immigration but focused on a single nation. Model parameterization for each of the migration models was accomplished through regression analysis using decadal data spanning the period 1960-2010. A similar approach was taken with acute migration dynamics except regression analysis utilized annual data sets limited to a shorter time horizon (2001-2013). The system dynamics spillover model was organized around two broad modules, one simulating the decision dynamics of migration and a second module that treats the changing environmental conditions that influence the migration decision. The environmental module informs the migration decision, endogenously simulating interactions/changes in the economy, labor, population, conflict, water, and food. A regional model focused on Mali in western Africa was used as a test case to demonstrate the efficacy of the model.
Sustainability is a critical national security issue for the U.S. and other nations. Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) is already a global leader in sustainability science and technology (SS&T) as documented in this report. This report documents the ongoing work conducted this year as part of the Sustainability Innovation Foundry (SIF). The efforts of the SIF support Sandia's national and international security missions related to sustainability and resilience revolving around energy use, water use, and materials, both on site at Sandia and externally. The SIF leverages existing Sandia research and development (R&D) in sustainability science and technology to support new solutions to complex problems. The SIF also builds on existing Sandia initiatives to support transformation of Sandia into a fully sustainable entity in terms of materials, energy, and water use. In the long term, the SIF will demonstrate the efficacy of sustainability technology developed at Sandia through prototyping and test bed approaches and will provide a common platform for support of solutions to the complex problems surrounding sustainability. Highlights from this year include the Sustainability Idea Challenge, improvements in facilities energy use, lectures and presentations from relevant experts in sustainability [Dr. Barry Hughes, University of Denver], and significant development of the Institutional Transformation (IX) modeling tools to support evaluation of proposed modifications to the SNL infrastructure to realize energy savings.