Neighbouring fields
Fields and ideas next to modelling that readers often arrive with: what each is, what it does, and where it meets a model of a place.
Each entry here describes a field or a body of thought that sits beside the modelling of places: futures studies, the writing on the polycrisis and metacrisis, frameworks for deciding what kind of problem a situation is, and research on how environmental change is governed. Each says what the field does and where it touches a model.
Terms
Dave Snowden's framework of five domains (clear, complicated, complex, chaotic and confused), each with its own mode of action and its own limits on prediction.
The study of possible futures in order to act now, also called futures studies or strategic foresight: where it is taught, its roots in anticipatory democracy, and why it avoids the word predict.
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Two words for the world's crises taken together: what each means, who uses them, and the few places they touch the modelling of places.
Organizations
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A research network of social scientists studying the rules and institutions that steer how societies respond to environmental change; it keeps a directory of governance datasets.