Session: DAC-12-01 Engineering for Global Development

Paper Number: 70827

Start Time: August 17, 03:20 PM

70827 - A Computational Framework for Social Entrepreneurs to Determine Policies for Sustainable Development 

Many villagers in India suffer from multiple socio-economic challenges, such as, low-income, unemployment, and lack of access to clean water and energy that hinder their overall development. Social entrepreneurs are capable stakeholders for the design and implementation of policies that help villagers achieve overall sustainability. Previously, a framework to support social entrepreneurs and stakeholders in identifying potential challenges and evaluate the impact of solutions concerning sustainable development was proposed. The framework was anchored in a single perspective (thematic area) Dilemma Triangle Method for identification of challenges and System Dynamics Models for evaluation of impacts. Policies for sustainable development, however, require an understanding of the interaction between multiple perspectives and their associated challenges to be viable, feasible, and equitable. Additionally, one key missing feature in the past framework is the evaluation of economic impact of the solutions or policies. 

In this paper, we propose an updated framework that uses the Dilemma Triangle Method that integrates more than one perspective, and the System Dynamics Model integrating the economic indicator to get a holistic view of sustainable development. By the addition of more than one thematic area in the Dilemma Triangle Method, the inter-dependency between thematic areas and their associated parameters is understood, which is necessary for identifying problems in complex systems. We include Gross Value Added (GVA) as an economic indicator for evaluating the economic feasibility of the policies identified by using the proposed framework. To illustrate the efficacy of the proposed framework, we implement it on the Kantashol village (panchayat), Jharkhand, India. Based on the Dilemma Triangle Method, multiple policies are proposed out of which four policies are evaluated in the Systems Dynamic Model for the sustainable development of the village. The policies are currently being applied in the village and the outcome of this framework will be validated in real-time over the years.

Presenting Author: Vispi Karkaria College of Engineering Pune (CoEP)

Authors:

Vispi Karkaria College of Engineering
Ashok K. Das SunMoksha Power Private Limited
Abhishek Yadav University of Oklahoma
Ayushi Sharma SunMoksha Power Pvt. Ltd.
Janet K. Allen University of Oklahoma
Farrokh Mistree University of Oklahoma