Using data-driven systems mapping to contextualise complexity economics insights

This article introduces and demonstrates a data-driven systems mapping approach designed to contextualise, communicate, and embed the insights of complexity economics in real world policy questions. This approach allows us to: build networks representing empirical regularities between a broad range of factors, analyse these networks in policy-relevant ways, and embed complexity economics insight in them. In using this approach to connect complexity economics with policy questions and a more rounded view of policy landscapes, we hope to help address a range of calls in recent literature for more usable, interpretable, and inclusive complexity economics outputs. We demonstrate the approach with the policy topic of the energy transition and its relationship with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We consider how the approach can be tuned to different purposes and contexts and explore two applied questions emerging from existing modelling results and policy topics: (i) the impact of the energy transition on SDGs and the role of biofuels, and (ii) the nature of climate impacts on the economy.