John Anderson

John W Anderson develops decision support software and virtual reality environments that help researchers and practitioners visualize complex systems. John leads interdisciplinary communities of virtual design experts, scientists, engineers, educators, and artists where the focus is the incorporation of virtual technologies in all aspects of education, research, modeling and simulation. John’s Research Laboratory specializes in innovative trans-disciplinary research where the emphasis is on virtual environment simulations for Social Ecological Systems (SES) decision support. These virtual environments and visualization tools simulate social ecological processes that allow people the ability to examine how particular actions can affect the future state of their communities and provides positive democratizing effects on public decision making. The ability to interactively manipulate policies, or environmental factors under a variety of scenarios allow individuals insight into the non-linear dynamics of SES and visualizes any potential risks that they might want to avoid in the future. Providing information in such a way allows individuals the ability to make decisions potentially against their own immediate self-interests for the benefit of future generations.