The Netherlands Platform Complex Systems (NPCS)

The Netherlands Platform Complex Systems (NPCS) was founded in November 2015 by NWO, TNO and the Dutch Universities. The aim of the NPCS is to encourage and foster communication, exchange and collaboration for scientists and groups in this multidisciplinary research area in the Netherlands. The platform will stimulate community building for researchers working on issues related to complexity and facilitate mutual awareness and exchange of ideas between different groups and for various complexity themes. The platform will identify and stimulate areas of complexity research in which scientists from the Netherlands are particularly strong, but will also identify areas of major societal and industrial need. Moreover, the platform should lower thresholds of access for the research community of complexity scientists to (potential) partners in business and society and stimulate interaction. Finally, the platform will stimulate activities that help shape and develop complexity theory as a coherent field of research, stimulate education at all academic levels, and foster links between the community in the Netherlands and similar international initiatives. The NPCS has a structure of a board with three working groups, aimed at research, education and society. The first chairman of the board is Prof. Erik van der Linden (WUR).

The activities are coordinated by the bureau of the NPCS, currently situated in Utrecht, with Mrs Marja van der Linden as coordinator (email: npcs uu.nl).