About the Author
Dirk Helbing is perhaps one of the most imaginative experts in the world when
it comes to envisioning the opportunities and risks of the digital revolution. He is
an advocate of value-sensitive design and strongly contributed to the public debate
around Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. He also coordinated the FuturICT initiative, which built a global interdisciplinary community of experts at the interface of
complexity, computer and data science. These activities, aimed at confronting global
problems and crises were featured by Scientific American as the number one worldchanging idea and earned him an honorary doctorate from TU Delft, where he later
coordinated the PhD school on “Engineering Social Technologies for a Responsible
Digital Future”.
Dirk Helbing is Professor of Computational Social Science at the Department of
Humanities, Social and Political Sciences and also affiliated to the Computer Science
Department at ETH Zurich. He has a Ph.D. in physics, was Managing Director of
the Institute of Transport & Economics at Dresden University of Technology in
Germany, and Professor of Sociology at ETH Zurich.
Helbing is an elected member of the German Academy of Sciences “Leopoldina”
and worked for the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Complex
Systems for some time. He was also a co-founder of the Physics of Socio-Economic
Systems Division of the German Physical Society and ETH Zurich’s Risk Center.
Furthermore, he is a member of the International Centre for Earth Simulation in
Geneva and various high-level committees to assess the implications of the digital
revolution. He was also a board member of the Global Brain Institute in Brussels.
The motivation for his research may be summarized by “What can complexity
science and information systems contribute to saving human lives?” This ranges
from avoiding crowd disasters over reducing crime and conflict to the reduction
of epidemic spreading. His work brings theoretical studies, data science, and lab
experiments together with agent-based computer models, where agents may have
cognitive features. Furthermore, his publication on globally networked risks called
for a Global Systems Science.
Using the “Internet of Things”, his team was also engaged in establishing the core
of a decentralized Digital Nervous System as a Citizen Web (see nervousnet.info).
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
D. Helbing, Next Civilization,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62330-2
323
Dirk Helbing is perhaps one of the most imaginative experts in the world when
it comes to envisioning the opportunities and risks of the digital revolution. He is
an advocate of value-sensitive design and strongly contributed to the public debate
around Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. He also coordinated the FuturICT initiative, which built a global interdisciplinary community of experts at the interface of
complexity, computer and data science. These activities, aimed at confronting global
problems and crises were featured by Scientific American as the number one worldchanging idea and earned him an honorary doctorate from TU Delft, where he later
coordinated the PhD school on “Engineering Social Technologies for a Responsible
Digital Future”.
Dirk Helbing is Professor of Computational Social Science at the Department of
Humanities, Social and Political Sciences and also affiliated to the Computer Science
Department at ETH Zurich. He has a Ph.D. in physics, was Managing Director of
the Institute of Transport & Economics at Dresden University of Technology in
Germany, and Professor of Sociology at ETH Zurich.
Helbing is an elected member of the German Academy of Sciences “Leopoldina”
and worked for the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Complex
Systems for some time. He was also a co-founder of the Physics of Socio-Economic
Systems Division of the German Physical Society and ETH Zurich’s Risk Center.
Furthermore, he is a member of the International Centre for Earth Simulation in
Geneva and various high-level committees to assess the implications of the digital
revolution. He was also a board member of the Global Brain Institute in Brussels.
The motivation for his research may be summarized by “What can complexity
science and information systems contribute to saving human lives?” This ranges
from avoiding crowd disasters over reducing crime and conflict to the reduction
of epidemic spreading. His work brings theoretical studies, data science, and lab
experiments together with agent-based computer models, where agents may have
cognitive features. Furthermore, his publication on globally networked risks called
for a Global Systems Science.
Using the “Internet of Things”, his team was also engaged in establishing the core
of a decentralized Digital Nervous System as a Citizen Web (see nervousnet.info).
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
D. Helbing, Next Civilization,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62330-2
323