Innovations in Collaborative Modeling

On today’s episode, we’re joined by Laura Schmitt Olabisi and Miles McNall to discuss another book in MSU Press’s Transformations in Higher Education Series: Innovations in Collaborative Modeling. Thanks for tuning in.
Collaborative applications of a variety of modeling methodologies have multiplied in recent decades due to widespread recognition of the power of models to integrate information from multiple sources, test assumptions about policy and management choices, and forecast the future states of complex systems. However, information about these modeling efforts often is segregated by both discipline and modeling approach, preventing folks from learning from one another. Innovations in Collaborative Modeling addresses the need for cross-disciplinary and cross-methodological communication.

To enhance a shared understanding of systems problems, scientists and stakeholders need strategies for integrating information from their respective fields, dealing with issues of scale and focus, and rigorously investigating assumptions. The chapters in this edited collection first explore modeling methodologies for enhanced collaboration, then offer case studies of collaborative modeling across different complex systems problems. Edited by Laura Schmitt-Olabisi, Miles McNall, William Porter, and Jinhua Zhao, this volume will be useful for experienced and beginning modelers as well as for scientists and stakeholders who work with them.

LAURA SCHMITT OLABISI is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability and the Environmental Science and Policy Program at Michigan State University.

MILES MCNALL is the Director of the Community Evaluation and Research Collaborative at Michigan State University.

Innovations in Collaborative Modeling is available at msupress.org and other fine booksellers. You can connect with the press on Facebook and @msupress on Twitter, where you can also find me @kurtmilb.

The MSU Press podcast is a joint production of MSU Press and the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Thanks to the team at MSU Press for helping to produce this podcast. Our theme music is “Coffee” by Cambo. 

Michigan State University occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg – Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi people. The University resides on Land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw.

Thank you all so much for listening, and never give up books.
MSU Press