Dana Meadows Award Presentation
R. Joel Rahn,
Co-ordinator of the Dana Meadows Award Committee
The Dana Meadows Award is given for the best paper, by a student,
presented at the Annual Conference. The Award was first presented at
the Atlanta Conference, in 2001, to honor the life and work of Dana
Meadows, who died in February of that year, after a long and brilliant
career in education and research focussed on a systems approach to
social and environmental issues. From her contributions to Limits to
Growth to her later writings in The Global Citizen, Dana was an
inspiration to generations of students and researchers in System
Dynamics.
The Award is instituted by the Society to bring recognition to the very
best student work and thereby, to inspire students to contribute to the
growing body of theory and applications of System Dynamics-
inspiration that Dana demonstrated throughout her career.
The Dana Meadows Award is funded through an endowment
established by the Society, initially by a generous donation from Jane
and Allen Boorstein to found the Award in 2001, and by many
subsequent donors whose support the Society gratefully acknowledges.
The members of the selection committee for the 2012 Award are
Richard Dudley, Andy Ford, John Morecroft, Krystyna Stave, John
Sterman and Erich Zahn.
Out of the 40 student papers submitted for this year's awards, two were
regarded as very good papers and worthy contributions to System
Dynamics.
The Committee chose to name two papers and their authors as co-winners
of the Dana Meadows Award for 2012.
In alphabetical order they are:
*David Keith, System Dynamics Group, Sloan School, MIT for the paper
"Understanding Spatiotemporal Patterns of Hybrid-Electric
Vehicle Adoption in the United States".
-A well-written paper that, by using the case of the Prius, contributes to
understanding of spatial adoption patterns in the US market. The heart of
the paper is a discrete choice model used in an empirical study to 'test'
three different models of adoption: social contagion, intrinsic
heterogeneity and homophily.
-The paper is an incredible piece of work to estimate coefficients in the
market choice model.
-A rigorous treatment of data gathered by sometimes ingenious means and
applied to a solid model. It certainly requires and largely repays a very
close reading.
The other co-winner is:
*Andras K6vari of Delft University of Technology for the paper
“Prostitution and Human Trafficking: A model-based exploration and
policy analysis ”.
-This paper describes an exploratory model of the connections between
modern slavery and prostitution and the use of the model to examine a set
of policy interventions. The problem investigated is the criminality
associated with prostitution
The paper is well-written and supported. It nicely explains the problem
context, development of the causal structure, and the stock and flow
model. The paper describes the analysis of the different policies. The
model is straightforward and, as the author states, one of several possible
formulations.
-A good example of using system dynamics as a first cut evaluation of an
important social problem and issue. The situation is clearly described and
an engaging model is developed, based on plausible assumptions and
judgemental parameter estimates. The model is used to explore a variety
of practical policy options that one can imagine would interest policy
makers.
The vivid case material and model can also be used in teaching, as the
appendix demonstrates.
The authors are to be congratulated for their efforts and their success in
analyzing and providing insight into significant dynamic issues.
