The tool grew out of the doctoral research conducted by Reiner Braun at Concordia University, Montréal, within the Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science. His PhD thesis, Modeling of Urban Food Systems to Improve Food Security of Vulnerable Populations using System Dynamics and Geospatial Information Systems, was supervised by Prof. Dr. Ursula Eicker and co-supervised by Prof. Dr. Dieter Hertweck.
It reflects our ambition: a place to feel science — where complex urban systems become visible, testable, and open to everyone. The DSS is built on open standards and open-source technologies, while the model, documented workflows, scripts, and associated data resources are made openly available to support transparency, reproducibility, and reuse. The underlying framework is designed to be domain- and location-independent, enabling the approach to be adapted and recalibrated for other cities and contexts.
The Model Works – Get Involved
- Cities and planners — We are looking for municipalities to pilot the Decision Support System in real planning processes: validating scenarios with local knowledge, testing interventions before budgets are committed, and shaping the tool around your workflows.
- Researchers — The full stack is open: the executable model, the XMILE files, the ETL pipelines, and the microservices architecture (github.com/reiner-os4os/ssd-dss). Transfer the approach to your city, extend the model, or challenge our assumptions — the documentation is written for reuse.
Write to us via the contact page — or open an issue on GitHub.