The Chicken or the Egg: Does Interdisciplinary Collaboration Enhance Systems Model-Building or Does Systems Model-Building Enhance Interdisciplinary Collaborations?

Does interdisciplinary team collaboration enhance the knowledge generated and shared in systems model building or does model building enhance the collaboration and collegiality of interdisciplinary team members? This paper addresses the processes involved in constructing dynamic system models of “deep complexity” related to scientific and environmental issues. Typically such model-building requires the knowledge and expertise of specific disciplinary specialists. The examples used in this analysis are descriptive evidence of one team’s efforts to model an urban airshed, which requires input from atmospheric chemists, biologists, engineers, meteorologists, and urban planners – just to name a few. The authors argue that addressing an emergent class of problems characterized by deep complexity requires an iterative process of interdisciplinary communication facilitated by model building. This model building, it is argued, serves as the “Rosetta Stone”, which can lead interdisciplinarians to create an organic narrative to describe the system and enhance the quality of knowledge