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Research Urban and Regional Studies Institute PRC

Modelling change

Former research theme 'Demographic monitoring and forecasting'

The development of models for the monitoring of demographic change may benefit from models that have been developed and are being developed in other disciplines, such as economics, for the monitoring of changes in the economy. The monitoring of changes in society is a broad field that should involve several disciplines. Processes of change have universal features independent of the domain. 

In 1999, the SOM research school started research on the modelling of change processes. The research cuts across several SOM research themes and was designed to integrate the interests of several disciplines in change. To accentuate the integrative nature of the project, the project was formulated by researchers from the three faculties participating in SOM and a postdoctoral researcher (Dr P. Rao Sahib). The PRC instantiated the integrative project. Change is approached from two complementary perspectives - changes within individual units (actors and agents) and changes that result from the interaction between units. The first perspective is the life course or life cycle perspective. The second focuses on the diffusion of change, new behavioural patterns or innovations, in a population as an outcome of multi-agent interactions. The aim of this research is to move the study of change to a higher level of abstraction and to identify the general mechanisms of change irrespective of the domain or time scale - such as age or duration - used.

Last modified:15 November 2012 2.26 p.m.