Pre ALPHA 0.9.10
Koios is a platform for collaboratively solving social problems. Learn how it works and how you can use it to solve big problems you care about.
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To help you solve complex social problems we provide 3 main components. Each component has a set of tools to help you in the process.
Helps you work on the actual problems. To analyse, model, simulate and much more using principles of Systems thinking.
Helps you to mobilize people, to motivate, organize and gather contributors, to convince decision makers, to manage teams, to start grass root movements and much more based on the ideas of Collective Intelligence.
Helps you apply the scientific method in working with a social problem. It helps you investigate, gather data, test hypothesis, manage references, share findings etc. with the help of crowdsourcing and citizen science.
The components above are not directly visible to you. Instead the user interface is organized based on the problem solving process of Koios.
The problem solving process is shown in the left menu of each problem space. It has the following steps:
| Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Welcome | Acts as a welcome page for new visitors new to the problem. |
| Overview | The overview step gives an overview of status and the people working on this problem. It is useful to decide if to join the problem space. |
| 1 Introduction | This step helps people become aware of the problem. This step will help you get acquainted with the problem. It can be seen as a collection of introductory information. |
| 2 Problem definition | This is where you try to define the problem and make a decisive problem statement that help to steer further investigation. What is the problem, the ideal situation, the symptoms, and effects of the situation? What is the scope of the investigation? |
| 3 Situation | While step 1 helped give you and introduction to the problem and the previous step helped you define the problem, this step goes further and helps you get an initial understanding of the situation at hand. It helps you gather and organize all relevant information and prepares you for further analysis. |
| 4 System behaviour | This step helps you map and track the behavior of the system. Looks at variables, how they change over time. What is going on? What are the patterns and events? |
| 5 Probable futures | Here you can make an assessment of the implications of not acting upon the problem. You will use trend- and PEST analysis, forecasting, futures studies and scenarios to predict where we are heading. |
| 6 People | Who are the stakeholders? How do they cooperate or compete? What are the group dynamics and what are the general public opinion? |
| 7 Tensions | In this step you look at the tensions between stakeholders, things/resources and Moral/ethics. |
| 8 Analysis | The analysis step lets you go in depth to look at why the current situation is the way it is and why it came to be. What are reasons for the causes, resistance, and behavior? How does the system adapt and why? |
| 9 Models | This is where you model the system using Causal loops diagrams and look at system archetypes and possible leverage points as well as doing simulations. This step helps you share your conceptualization of the problem situation as well as to check if your model of the situation is accurate and simulate possible solutions. |
| 10 Summary | Provides a summary of all the findings so far and what are the grey areas. What are areas for further investigation? |
| 11 Desired future | Helps you find out where you want to go and how to judge and decide what good solutions are. |
| 12 Solutions | Provides tools to brainstorm, find, evaluate, assess, predict and simulate and recommend solutions proposals. |
| 13 Change | The change step is where you and your team decide to implement one or more solutions. Here you create a new change project to actually do something about the problem. |
It is important to note here that problem solving is not a linear process. You may jump back and forth between these steps as much as you like. However starting at the top is always a good idea. It is also advisable to revisit previous steps to fill in missing or new information and update content as you work on the problem and gain new insights.
We belive societal problems is best tackled with interaction, coordination and integration.
Koios has the potential to take this to a new level using state of the art web science.
What is unique about Koios is that it is a platform for distributed coordinated complex problem solving. Anyone on the web can join in to help solve the problems facing humanity.
Read our about page to learn what type of problems it can solve.
Fig 1. Koios and Collective Intelligence
The illustration above shows how distributed teams or individuals organize bottom up and form networks to share data, information and knowledge. Both experts and laypersons gather to solve the problem.
Experts such as scientists or analysts add scientific models, statistics and sophisticated models based on (scientific) research. In many cases laypersons will find reports, articles and data created by experts and link to it rather than the expert her self adding it on Koios.
People who want to help solve a problem establish a core group or act alone. In most problems you will need people on the ground. Someone situated in the problem domain, a stakeholder or other actor in the system. To really understand a problem you have to be embedded in the situation. The team will then find peers that can act as proxies. These proxies are then to go into the real world problem situation and work with the people to uncover all issues and aspects of the problem. If you are not able to find someone to take this role you should plan how you yourself can do this.
The contribution of practical hands-on knowledge is importatnt, as people at the local level have a better understanding of the real potential and limitation of their local environment. Rinaudo and Garin 2005.
Fig 2. The Koios process
Koios is designed to be used online as a virtual environment. Each user, while not out doing field work, can sit at home and collaborate. We belive grassroots engagement combined with analytic and systemic inquiry is the key.
The iterative process is depicted in the illustration to the left.
To get started simply
browse our problem catalogue or
register a new problem.
You may also want to read our User guide.