Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Climate CoLab: Harnessing Collective Intelligence to Address Climate Change Issues
http://climatecolab.org

Robert Laubacher (Project Manager), Thomas Malone, John Sterman, Hal Abelson , Joshua Introne

Global climate change is among the most pressing and important problem currently facing humanity. It is also unique by virtue of being a truly systemic problem of vast complexity: it affects every one of us, and is directly affected by every one of our actions. Like nothing else, dealing with climate change calls upon us to engage in effective collective decision making on a global scale. The spectacular emergence of the Internet and associated information technology has enabled unprecedented opportunities for such interactions. To date, however, these interactions have been incoherent and dispersed, contributions vary widely in quality, and there has been no clear way to converge on well-supported decisions concerning what actions, both grand and ground-level, humanity should take to solve its most pressing problems.The goal of this project is to address this important challenge through the creation of a new class of web-mediated discussion and decision making forum, called the CoLab. This system, currently under development, will use an innovative combination of internet-mediated interaction, collectively generated idea repositories, computer simulation, and explicit representation of argumentation to help large, diverse, and geographically-dispersed groups systematically explore, evaluate, and come to decisions concerning systemic challenges.

See information about an exihibit on the Climate Climate CoLab at the MIT Museum
»»Video about CCI included in the exhibit
»»Video about the Climate Climate CoLab included in the exhibit

  • Dalai Lama discusses global problems with Sloan professors, Thomas W. Malone, Deborah Ancona, John Sterman, MIT Sloan newsroom, Oct 17, 2012
  • Thomas W. Malone, panel discussion, MIT with the Dalai Lama, MITnews, Oct 16, 2012
  • The Dalai Lama visits MIT, full video of the conference, Oct 15, 2012
  • Thomas W. Malone, video interview, Putting collective intelligence to work on a global threat, The Globe and Mail, Sept 4, 2012
  • Read a 2011 working paper on the Climate CoLab project (a later version received the best paper award at CTS 2011, the 2011 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems).
  • Read an overview of the current plans and status of the project as of September 2009
  • See the article on this project in the summer 2007 issue of Innovations
  • Watch a You Tube movie that shows how the deliberation component of the Climate CoLab works

    Read some recent articles in the press about the Climate CoLab:
    -->     Climate Colab in NSF Highlights, Online Citizen Collaboration Provides Climate Solutions, June 5, 2012
    -->CoLab in Scientific American blog, October 2011
    -->New York Times Climate blog, May 2011
    -->fastcompany.com October 2010 and November 2010
    -->New York Times climate blog, October 2010
    -->Collective Brainpower, MIT Spectrum, Summer 2010
    -->MIT Sloan Alumni Magazine, Spring 2009
    --> New York Times climate blog, April 2008
    --> Nature.com climate blog, April 2008
    --> Nature Network News, April 2008
    --> Sloan Management Review, Spring 2008
    --> MIT Technology Insider, Best of 2007 Special Edition Read a working paper on the first pilot of the Climate CoLab's deliberation system

    For more information, please contact Robert Laubacher.

    Note: Prior to fall 2010, this project was called the Climate Collaboratorium, and some of the publications listed above refer to it by that name.