United States Institute of Peace – författare

Societies have sought to improve the outputs of their agricultural producers for thousands of years. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, efforts to convey agricultural knowledge to farmers became known as extension services, a term adopted from programs at Oxford and Cambridge designed to extend the knowledge generated at universities to surrounding communities. Traditionally, extension services have emphasized a top-down model of technology transfer that encourages and teaches producers to use crop and livestock varieties and agricultural practices that will increase food production. More recently, extension services have moved toward a facilitation model, in which extension agents work with producers to identify their needs and the best sources of expertise to help meet those needs.

On May 1, 2012, the Roundtable on Science, Technology, and Peacebuilding held a workshop in Washington, DC, to explore whether and how extension activities could serve peacebuilding purposes. The Roundtable is a partnership between the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP). It consists of senior executives and experts from leading governmental organizations, universities, corporations, and nongovernmental organizations, was established in 2011 to make a measurable and positive impact on conflict management, peacebuilding, and security capabilities. Its principal goals are:

On May 23, 2012, the Roundtable on Technology, Science, and Peacebuilding convened a workshop at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) to investigate data sharing as a means of improving coordination among US government and nongovernment stakeholders involved in peacebuilding and conflict management activities. Using Data Sharing to Improve Coordination in Peacebuilding:Report of a Workshop by the National Academy of Engineering and the United States Institute of Peace: Roundtable on Technology, Science, and Peacebuilding addresses the following question: What needs must a data sharing system address to create more effective coordination in conflict zones and to promote the participation of federal agencies and nonfederal organizations in Peacebuilding?

In addition, the workshop served as a means to obtain feedback on the UNITY system, a data-sharing platform developed by the Department of Defense (DOD) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Roundtable was established in 2011 as a partnership between USIP and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) to make a measurable and positive impact on conflict management, peacebuilding, and security capabilities by bringing together leaders from the technical and peacebuilding communities. Its members are senior executives and experts from leading governmental organizations, universities, corporations, and nongovernmental organizations.

Its principal goals are: 1. To accelerate the application of science and technology to the process of peacebuilding and stabilization; 2. To promote systematic, high-level communication between peacebuilding and technical organizations on the problems faced and the technical capabilities required for successful peacebuilding; and 3. To collaborate in applying new science and technology to the most pressing challenges faced by local and international peacebuilders working in conflict zones. The Roundtable is strongly committed to action-oriented projects, and the long-term goal of each is to demonstrate viability with a successful field trial. The Roundtable has selected a portfolio of high-impact peacebuilding problems on which to focus its efforts: 1. Adapting agricultural extension services to peacebuilding, 2.Using data sharing to improve coordination in peacebuilding, 3. Sensing emerging conflicts, and 4. Harnessing systems methods for delivery of peacebuilding services.

Technology has revolutionized many aspects of modern life, from how businesses operate, to how people get information, to how countries wage war. Certain technologies in particular, including not only cell phones and the Internet but also satellites, drones, and sensors of various kinds, are transforming the work of mitigating conflict and building peaceful societies. Rapid increases in the capabilities and availability of digital technologies have put powerful communications devices in the hands of most of the world''s population.

These technologies enable one-to-one and one-to-many flows of information, connecting people in conflict settings to individuals and groups outside those settings and, conversely, linking humanitarian organizations to people threatened by violence. Communications within groups have also intensified and diversified as the group members use new technologies to exchange text, images, video, and audio. Monitoring and analysis of the flow and content of this information can yield insights into how violence can be prevented or mitigated. In this way technologies and the resulting information can be used to detect and analyze, or sense, impending conflict or developments in ongoing conflict.

On October 11, 2012, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) held a workshop in Washington, DC, to identify "major opportunities and impediments to providing better real-time information to actors directly involved in situations that could lead to deadly violence." The workshop brought together experts in technology, experts in peacebuilding, and people who have worked at the intersections of those two fields on the applications of technology in conflict settings, to consider uses of technology to sense emerging and ongoing conflicts and provide information and analyses that can be used to prevent violent and deadly conflict. Sensing and Shaping Emerging Conflicts: Report of a Joint Workshop of the National Academy of Engineering and the United States Institute of Peace: Roundtable on Technology, Science, and Peacebuilding summarizes the workshop.

Operational systems engineering is a methodology that identifies the important components of a complex system, analyzes the relationships among those components, and creates models of the system to explore its behavior and possible ways of changing that behavior. In this way it offers quantitative and qualitative techniques to support the design, analysis, and governance of systems of diverse scale and complexity for the delivery of products or services. Many peacebuilding interventions function essentially as the provision of services in response to demands elicited from societies in crisis. At its core, operational systems engineering attempts to understand and manage the supply of services and product in response to such demands.

Harnessing Operational Systems Engineering to Support Peacebuilding is the summary of a workshop convened in November 2012 by the Roundtable on Science, Technology, and Peacebuilding of the National Academy of Engineering and the United States Institute of Peace to explore the question "When can operational systems engineering, appropriately applied, be a useful tool for improving the elicitation of need, the design, the implementation, and the effectiveness of peacebuilding interventions?" The workshop convened experts in conflict prevention, conflict management, postconflict stabilization, and reconstruction along with experts in various fields of operational systems engineering to identify what additional types of nonnumerical systems methods might be available for application to peacebuilding.