Abstract for: War of the Worlds: Did Capetoria survive? An historical perspective on the arrival of aliens in our peaceful utopia.

The purpose of the workshop is to expose attendees to the process of working with Systemigrams and SD Models in a fun, non-academic setting. The case study is loosely based on the original work by HG Wells, the awesome BBC radio drama and the movie "War of the Worlds". In part one of the workshop participants will go through a facilitated process to create a Systemigram of the problem under study. In part two, participants will build and calibrate a basic system dynamics model with STELLA, using synthetic data. When participants are fully conversant with the principles, they will be allowed to explore a more comprehensive model with the objective of finding a solution to the case study by experiencing the effect the ability of SD to show counter intuitive outcomes, that make logical sense once fully explored.