Society currently faces a set of new challenges that are both global in scale and highly dynamic. Some of the most critical are: climate change, energy, security, the spread of new diseases such as HIV and the continued devastating effects of old diseases, such as malaria. These issues involve resources and impacts which no single group in society controls, but which affect all people worldwide. They require the allocation of significant resources to the preservation or development of 'public goods', such as the earth's climate, security or public health.The purpose of GSD is to create a new set of links between scientists and stakeholders to develop new simulation and visualisation methods to analyse these issues and to seek new ways in which science can support policy and decision making. The project will organise a series of workshops and conferences to bring together scientists specialising in the analysis of these global challenges, including experts in the application of ICT FETs for the analysis of complex, dynamic systems. In parallel, a series of dialogues will be carried out between scientists, stakeholders and decision makers to explore new mechanisms of interaction between these groups exploiting the application of modern ICT FET simulation tools for rapid analysis of complex dynamic systems, including the analysis of very large, dispersed data sets.