Civitas Systems · Dave Zelinka, PhD
Insight from chaos.
One person, six fields: climate, energy and the environment; peace, governance and development. Complex problems, emissions and impacts, data and tools, and research, with the method chosen for the problem at hand. Every number and every claim comes with its source.
What I know
Two pillars, six domains
The sustainability of environmental, human and economic systems working together, where pulling on one moves the others. Earth on one side: climate, energy, ecosystems. Humanity on the other: peace, governance, development. These are the areas my expertise and work have been in, not fences around where they can go.
Earth
Climate & Emissions
Measuring and reporting greenhouse gases: inventories, emission factors, the emissions of whole sectors, and the climate data behind them.
Energy Transition
How energy systems change: renewables and their economics, decarbonization scenarios, fossil fuels and extraction, and energy where development is the goal.
Environment & Ecology
What activities do to water, land and ecosystems: impact assessment, ecotoxicity, life cycle assessment, and water resources.
Humanity
Peace & Conflict
Fragile and conflict-affected settings: violence, trust, and the institutions meant to hold them, and how those three move each other.
Corruption & Governance
Institutions and the informal power around them: corruption networks, accountability, and the justice systems meant to check both.
International Development
Sustainable development that puts people first: engineering for communities, humanitarian engineering, and the Sustainable Development Goals as one coupled system.
Is this for you?
Who I work with
Four kinds of client and what each usually comes for, drawn from the work I have done. If yours is here, the rest of the page is for you.
Government agencies
A greenhouse-gas or air-pollutant inventory to build or defend, a regulatory archive that has to become usable data, or a program to understand before you change it. Every number carries its source and its date.
Companies and climate-accounting firms
An organizational GHG inventory, emission factors chosen and sourced, or the reference data and pipelines behind corporate disclosure, all of it built to pass third-party verification.
NGOs, institutes and foundations
An evidence review before a decision, the analysis of a program in a fragile setting, or a map of the actors and the money around a problem, every claim traced to its source.
Research teams
A co-author or methods person for the data, systems or accounting side of the research, or a reviewer before it goes out. You direct; I work inside the team.
What I do
The work I take on
Complex problems
Problems where cause and effect do not run in a straight line: many actors, feedback, delays and behavior that no single part explains. The work is to find how the pieces move each other, on a map or in a model, and where a change would take hold.
Systems thinking · System dynamics · Network analysis · Agent-based modeling · Scenario analysis
Emissions & impacts
Counting emissions and impacts so the numbers hold up: an organization's, facility's, city's or household's greenhouse-gas inventory; a life cycle assessment, a carbon or water footprint, or a product declaration; a critical review of someone else's. Every number traceable; built to pass verification.
Emissions inventories · Life cycle assessments · Carbon, water and product footprints · Emission factors · Regulatory reporting
Data & tools
Building the data and the tools, and handing them over: pipelines and databases that turn raw data into checked data; datasets that do not exist, built from scratch; tools and dashboards your team keeps; applications on existing language models.
Data engineering · Custom datasets · Data analysis & modeling · Tools & dashboards · AI applications
Research
Work on a question, to publication standard, whether the question is social or technical and the method qualitative or quantitative: the design; what is already known, with every claim sourced; the data analyzed into findings; the writing; and the review before it goes out.
Research design · Evidence synthesis · Mixed methods · Report and paper writing · Critical review
A verifiable and reproducible chain of evidence
Every number, source and step, checkable and rebuildable, end to end. The rules I work by, for the data, for the literature and information behind the models, and for the science of the models themselves: every number carries where it came from and when; every claim keeps its citation and can be found; the same methods and datasets are used consistently throughout; someone else could rebuild the result and get the same answer; and the uncertainty is stated rather than buried.
Selected work
Work with the sources attached
Corruption & Governance
Network analysis of political corruption in Bosnia
United States Institute of Peace · Transparency International · 2021–2025
A graph-data-science project mapping the structural relationships between political parties, state-owned enterprises, and corporate actors in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Read the case →Climate & Emissions · Energy Transition
Targeting hyper-polluting power plants
RASEI, CU Boulder (NSF-funded) · 2019–2021
A global analysis of how climate and energy policies actually affect emissions from the world's electricity sector. Published in Environmental Research Letters (Grant, Zelinka & Mitova, 2021).
Read the case →Peace & Conflict · Corruption & Governance
Systems thinking for Burkina Faso judicial reform
United States Institute of Peace · 2019–2021
Multi-year engagement supporting the design and implementation of systems-thinking training for Burkinabè judicial reform.
Read the case →The published record, 16 works, is listed on About.
Who I am
Dave Zelinka, PhD, founder of Civitas Systems. Civil systems engineer and climate data scientist, 16 published works, and author of a published method for turning literature into source-traceable causal models. More about me →
Send me a note
A few lines about the decision you need to make, or defend, is the most useful thing you can send. I read every message myself and reply within a week.