Systems Dynamics

The purpose of this paper is to lay the ground for an open source pattern language for systemic transformation (PLAST) based on systemic interpretation. This pattern language will help change agents and practitioners on the ground make sense of complex systemic phenomena and dynamics so they can build truly transformative solutions and create greater coherence between disparate actions, thus leveraging and catalyzing agency and capacity for change wherever it may be found.

The end goal is to accelerate the transition to a sustainable and thrivable world, through the awareness and fostering of sustainable socio-economic dynamics regenerative of commons. Commons are understood here as the distributed factors of opportunity and renewal of the system, which need to be perpetually maintained to ensure the on-going sustainability and thrivability of the system and its components.

Paper prepared for the PurplSoc Workshop - Pursuit of Pattern Languages for Societal Change, at Danube-University, November 14/15, 2014

A recent EU directive addresses End-of-Life Vehicles (ELV) as a waste-management problem to be faced on the basis of 'extended producer responsibility' and stipulates minimum reuse and recovery rates for end-of-life vehicles. The task of creating an economically robust recycling infrastructure involves a significant effort to develop systems and procedures that will have to meet requirements established by the ELV directive. In particular, recent innovations in automotive-shredder residue-separation technologies and subsequent materials recycling are a candidate to constitute an alternative strategy to classic component-dismantling procedures. This paper makes use of a systems dynamics model, applied to the Portuguese ELV-processing infrastructure, to evaluate how current practices under different recycling strategies depend on recycled materials markets and on car composition. The main objective is to discuss how far recycling technology innovation can be a major driver for technology shift in the automobile industry.

Freight Transport Time (FTT) is an important resource for manufacturing companies, firstly as a cost driver of logistics processes and secondly as a key factor of customer satisfaction. Yet, there is a lot of controversy between researchers regarding the strength of the link between changes in transport time and business performance and the methods used to measure this effect. In this context, the aim of this paper is to estimate the effect that changes in freight transport time have on the economic performance of transport consuming manufacturing companies. With the use of System Dynamics Modelling a simulation model is built identifying the role of FTT in the internal supply chain of a Make to Stock manufacturer. Changes in FTT are introduced in the system affecting the production materials inventory replenishment time and the delivery to consumer time. Simulation results suggest that the effect of FTT changes depend highly on the structure of the company's decision making process. Through the development and simulation of several scenarios it is evident that information feedback about changes in FTT if interpreted and processed by different decision rules and strategies can lead to different results allowing companies to fruitfully-or not-reap the benefits of improved FTT.

Systems Dynamics Economic Modelling of the Fiscal Impacts from
the Indonesia’s 1st Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).

The Paris Agreement is implemented in Indonesia through cooperation of all concerned. The Indonesian Government is consistent with its commitment to bring down the greenhouse gas emission and the program of adaptation to climate change as mentioned in the document of Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) as a product of the Paris Agreement. Indonesia also has ratified the Paris Agreement. Through NDC, Indonesia is committed by itself to reducing Green House gas emission by 29 percent in 2030 and with international cooperation by 41 percent. Data in 2016, Indonesia succeeded in reducing gas emission by 8.7 percent through various sectors. In 2017, the reduction already reached 16 percent – according Ministry of Forestry and Environment.
In reaching the 29 percent target Indonesia has good modality in fulfilling NDC commitment, this paper reports the fiscal capacity in achieving Indonesia’s NDC. The important role of budgetary finance in providing funding according scenarios related to climate change and the development of a green economy is nonetheless crucial to consider the stability of the state's financial condition in order to remain in a prudent condition sustaining drive for other sectors of economic growth and equity.
This study developed a system dynamics economic model to explore impacts of implementing National Determined Contribution (NDC) to fiscal space using Indonesian data. The exploration includes (1) finding the financial capacity of the country at the baseline; (2) finding the state of the fiscal balance in applying funding policies for climate change-based activities; (3) finding the most effective climate change scenarios to be financed by the state.
Simulation results show that climate change financing does not significantly impact state finance. Indonesia's revenue growth can still overcome the influx of financing needs for climate change. Thus, through this model, it can be concluded that the national budget is still in capacity to finance the needs for climate change’s 1st NDC.

In this paper, the importance of context dependent modelling of complex systems, depending on the observer's point of view will be discussed. Thus, context is synonymous for the content of a problem in a frame of the goals, starting points and ways to achieve these aims. In this light, difficulties of model validation and a general method how to overcome them will be discussed. The relations among subject – object – model in the light of a systems approach; Charles Sanders Peirce's triad principle and the semiotic principle of communication will be also discussed. The appropriateness of a system dynamics methodology, which is due to its transparency an excellent tool for modelling of complex systems for strategic decision-making assessment will be shown. The methodology will be applied to a global tourism system, which possesses the typical properties of global and local organisations. A verbal description of a tourism problem is followed by a causal loop diagram, which helps to discuss the problem categorically. We named it a qualitative modelling. At the conclusion we will present a simulation model in a frame of system dynamics as an illustration of the discussed methodology.

Understanding the context and problems of a manufacturing enterprise (ME) and its internal dynamics, primarily through modeling by its processes, operations, and activities. This paper attempts to provide indeepth understanding of the structure and internal mechanisms of ME that shape the overall dynamic behavior through system dynamics modeling. In this paper, we discuss the system dynamics model in detail and present the insights gained from running simulations. Before adopting a new policy, this model may be used to investigate alternative policy possibilities pertaining to decisions and can be used to forecast system behaviour and acquire insights using solid engineering and scientific concepts and approaches. The paper describes major influences in ME from a system perspective, problems inherent in production systems made clear because the modeling of causal loops introduce cross-departmental issues and promote process Integration. This model guides managers through a continuous improvement process relative to addressing physical, policy or paradigm constraints in their production system.

Recently, there have been Indonesian students who chose to study abroad with various initial intentions in increasing numbers. However, from the viewpoint of future national development it is feared that students finally may choose to stay abroad rather than to go back to Indonesia and to contribute to developing their homeland. Not only for students but also for professionals, especially specialists and engineers, feel more desirable to work in developed countries rather than their homeland. Although this phenomenon is not conspicuous, it is very significant to Indonesia. This study aims to grasp the general situation of 'Brain Drain' in Indonesia, to explain the 'Brain Drain' process by constructing a System Dynamics model, and to estimate the effects of government's policies by simulations under a variety of policy scenarios. Two main methodologies are used in this study. First is the use of descriptive statistics. The second methodology is application of System Dynamics (SD) to social model building. The questionnaire results suggest that 'education' factor is the most influential for respondent's decision on where to live; then followed by 'economy', 'social', 'environment', and 'politics' factors. The results also indicate that most of respondents' occupations are students. Second, according to the data gathered for calculating the correlations between factors, 'economic' indicator is considered as the core factor because it has high correlations with other factors except for 'social' indicator. Three mixed policy scenarios are selected for simulation and showing the most optimal policy scenario by comparison with the base scenario: (1) education and economy; (2) social and education; and (3) politics and economy. The result of simulations shows that each mixed policies has its own impact in different aspects because it has different characteristics and concentrations, hence it depends on the government which scenario to follow. .

Analiza las estrategias de transporte sustentable que la tecnología Retro-Rotatoria hace viables, en especial del avión espacial eólico híbrido de alta velocidad para usos aeroespaciales y transatmosféricos, pero también para aplicaciones terrestres (dentro de la industria automotriz), para aplicaciones marinas y submarinas (el sub "volador" de alta velocidad), para aplicaciones aeronáuticas híbridas (como el dirigible anclable intercambiable a vehículos terrestres o el helicoptero de alta velocidad).

Improving smallholder performance remains a seemingly intractable central issue for beef farming development in Indonesia. Studying a complex system such as beef farming requires a systems thinking approach. In the body of systems thinking, System Dynamics (SD) is considered to be a powerful methodology for taming the complexity of a system. However, SD has been criticized as being insensitive to the multiple interests and power structures likely to occur in a smallholder system. This thesis reports on the possibility of combining Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) and Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) to overcome that limitation.

A recently developed system dynamics model specifies a new hypothesis for the extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene - Second Order Predation - and compares it with the overkill hypothesis (see http://quaternary.net/extinct2000). It provides a quantitative description of the interrelationships between four plant stocks, four herbivore stocks, carnivores, and H. sapiens. Different assumptions regarding H. sapiens in-migration, hunting of

La presente relazione affronta il tema della crescita economica e del
benessere in rapporto alla sostenibilità ambientale declinata sia nella
finitezza delle risorse sia nell'inquinamento e degenerazione ambientale.
Questo testo trae origine da due fonti ed uno strumento: il libro Limits to
Growth: The 30-Year Update, alcuni articoli del professore John D. Sterman
ed il linguaggio di programmazione di System Dynamics chiamato Modelica.
Limits to Growth, pur essendo divenuto un riferimento importante anche
per gli accademici, ha un linguaggio particolarmente divulgativo e non
spiega a fondo la matematica utilizzata per i vari modelli: si è quindi scelto di
analizzare i mattoni-base delle complesse costruzioni necessarie alla
scaturigine degli scenari mondiali.
I modelli utilizzati nel libro sono stati recentemente tradotti nel linguaggio
open Modelica: utilizzando il programma di simulazione OpenModelica
(anch’esso open source) è stato possibile trovare ed analizzare le
fondamenta dei modelli.
Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update è l'ultimo aggiornamento del volume
commissionato nel 1972 dal Club di Roma al MIT che riuscì a scuotere le
coscienze degli intellettuali riguardo al rapporto tra crescita economica,
prosperità e finitezza delle risorse.
Infine gli articoli di Sterman contemporaneamente professore di
Management e di System Dynamics del MIT evidenziano la stretta relazione
tra questa branca dell'ingegneria e l'economia.

I use the framework implicit in the model of inflation by Shone (1997) to address the analytical properties of a simple dynamic AS-AD model and solve it numerically. The AS-AD model is built by incorporating an expectations-augmented Phillips curve within an IS-LM framework. I use a program developed in MATLAB to plot the numerical solutions of the model and simulate 5 possible outcomes in terms of phase portraits using different parameter values. The same program also accommodates for the implementation of monetary policy shocks, fiscal policy shocks  and supply side shocks.

This paper illustrates how the payoff matrices of the single group Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) and the Intergroup Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD) differentially reinforce cooperation when participants care about relative performance. Examples of particular payoff patterns and thought experiments using a computational simulation demonstrate that withholding cooperation is not always the dominant strategy in the IPD. In the intergroup structure, three conditions differentially reinforce cooperation. When competing groups have equal numbers of cooperators, withholding cooperation is always the dominant strategy just as in the single group structure. In contrast, when one group has more cooperators than the other group, cooperation by its members can dominate withholding cooperation by members of the other group. Thus, the relative advantage of one group over another increases the payoff for cooperation in some configurations of the IPD over the payoff in the PD. Relative payoff is thus an untheorized variable motivating cooperation in the IPD.

This article explores the four sources of (scientific) knowledge: perception, inference, reference and comparison. In Western literature on the nature, criterion, scope and kinds of knowledge the importance of comparing, said to be the core of cognition, has been somewhat neglected, which is remarkable because no research (and certainly no country research) can be conducted without drawing comparisons, without taking two, or more than two, objects, individuals or entities and examining in what respect(s) they are similar and in what respect(s) they are different. Whoever decides to engage in comparative country research has to decide on (a) the kind of objects to investigate, (b) the respect in which to conduct the investigation, and (c) the research method to follow. In brief, important decisions have to be made, decisions that will determine the structure and accessibility of the research outcome. After reference to the problem vividly described by the old, Indian parable of the ‘the blind men and the elephant’, a clue is taken from Nietzsche’s perspectivism.

La obra literaria Romeo y Julieta de William Shakespeare ha motivado a varios científicos sociales, naturales y de las ciencias exactas a explicar, analizar y reflexionar acerca del amor de estos dos personajes, bajo diversas disciplinas, como lo son la Historia, la Física y las Matemáticas, para que las nuevas generaciones comprendan que este sentimiento puede ser explicado bajo diversas aristas. De manera particular, en esta ponencia nos enfocaremos a la relación existente entre el contexto histórico-social de esta historia de amor y su estudio como un sistema dinámico a partir de un modelo matemático lineal analizando diversos casos.

Для обоснования параметров управления потоковыми процессами в системах производства и сбыта металлоизделий с целью повышения их эффективности применяются имитационные модели на основе методов автоматного, дискретно-событийного и системно-динамического моделирования, а также подходов к их комбинированию и комплексному применению на практике
Simulation models are applied to justify the parameters of control of flow processes in production and sales of metal in order to increase their effectiveness. These models are based on the methods of automata, discrete-event and system dynamics simulation, as well as approaches to their combination and integrated application in practice

PhD dissertation submitted to Keio University Graduate School of Media & Governance and degree earned July 30, 2018.

Abstract:

Over the last century civilization has systematically supported a market based approach to developing technical, financial, social and legal tools that focus on efficiency, growth and productivity. In this manner we have achieved considerable progress on some of the most pressing humanitarian challenges, such as eradicating infectious diseases and making life easier and more convenient. However, we have often put our tools and methods to use with little regard to their systemic or long-term effects, and have thereby created a set of new, interconnected, and more complex problems. Our new problems require new approaches: new understanding, solution design and intervention. Yet we continue to try to solve these new problems with the same tools that caused them.

Therefore in my dissertation I ask:

How can we understand and effectively intervene in interconnected complex adaptive systems?

In particular, my thesis presents through theory and practice the following contributions to addressing these problems:

1. A post-Internet framework for understanding and intervening in complex adaptive systems. Drawing on systems dynamics, evolutionary dynamics and theory of change based on causal networks, I describe a way to understand and suggest ways to intervene in complex systems. I argue that an anti-disciplinary approach and paradigm shifts are required to achieve the outcomes we desire.

2. Learnings from the creation and management of post-Internet organizations that can be applied to designing and deploying interventions. I propose an architecture of layers of interoperability to unbundle complex, inflexible, and monolithic systems and increase competition, cooperation, generativity, and flexibility. I argue that the Internet is the best example of this architecture and that the Internet has provided an opportunity to deploy this architecture in other domains. I demonstrate how the Internet has has made the world more complex but through lowering the cost of communication and collaboration has enabled new forms of organization and production. This has changed the nature of our interventions.

3. How and why we must change the values of society from one based on the measurement of financial value to flourishing and robustness. The paradigm determines what we measure and generates the values and the goals of a system. Measuring value financially has created a competitive market-based system that has provided many societal benefits but has produced complex problems not solvable through competitive market-based solutions. In order to address these challenges, we must shift the paradigm across our systems to focus on a more complex measure of flourishing and robustness. In order to transcend our current economic paradigm, the transformation will require a movement that includes arts and culture to transform strongly held beliefs. I propose a framework of values based on the pursuit of flourishing and a method for transforming ourselves.

Reflecting on my work experience, I examine my successes and failures in the form of learnings and insights. I discuss what questions are outstanding and conclude with a call to action with a theory of change; we need to bring about a fundamental normative shift in society through communities, away from the pursuit of growth for growth’s sake and towards a sustainable sensibility of flourishing that can draw on both the historical examples and the sensibilities of some modern indigenous cultures, as well as new values emerging from theoretical and practical progress in science.

Die Systemphysik führt auf neuen Wegen zu den Grundgesetzen der Physik. In der Mechanik liefert sie ausgehend von der Relativitätstheorie eine umfassende, aber erstaunlich verständliche Darstellung der fundamentalen Zusammenhänge. Wer diesen Weg kennt, wird nie wieder Kräfte falsch einzeichnen, Impuls mit Energie verwechseln oder behaupten, F = m*a sei das Grundgesetz der Mechanik.

From a semiotic viewpoint, Tarot has been described as a mere artifact with pictorial cards being signifiers in a symbolic sense. This paper reconceptualizes the process-structure of Tarot by placing it in a three-fold framework that merges semiotics with systems-theoretical and cybernetic
perspectives. Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic logic embedded in the action of signs, or semiosis in mind and nature, serves as a point of departure. By addressing Tarot from the position of general systems theory it is possible to describe Tarot dynamics by means of a sort of indexical connection
to its signified. The latter, albeit functioning in a symbolic sense as an archetypal field of Jungian collective unconscious, is nevertheless capable of producing real effects at the level of human emotions, cognitions and habitual behaviors. The interpretation of symbols as the Peircean category
of Thirdness creates, by virtue of mediation, a feedback loop, that is it generates conditions of possibility for self-organization. The previously unconscious, that is as yet out of conscious awareness, contents of one’s mind become available to human knowing. The process of reading and interpretation contributes to, in a pragmatic sense, the creation of meanings for mental representations, the former inferred from the symbolism embedded in Tarot pictures. As such, Tarot as a self-organized system has the potential to provide epistemic access to the Peircean virtual Real, affirming, in a way, some contemporary debates of cognitive science.

En este trabajo mostramos a la unión Josephson como un sistema dinámico. La ecuación diferencial que describe a este dispositivo es análoga a la de un péndulo amortiguado sometido a una torca constante, la cual puede reescribirse en una ecuación sin dimensiones debido a la introducción de un parámetro T que hace adimensional al tiempo. La corriente total que fluye por este dispositivo consta de tres componentes: la corriente de desplazamiento, la corriente normal y la supercorriente. Al seleccionar T en dos formas distintas podemos estudiar el comportamiento del sistema cuando: a) La corriente de desplazamiento es despreciable con respecto a la corriente normal y a la supercorriente de los pares de Cooper, b) la corriente normal es pequeña comparada con la de desplazamiento y la supercorriente, y c) el caso general en donde las tres corrientes son del mismo orden de magnitud, mostrando la existencia de un ciclo límite. En todos estos casos, el parámetro variable es la razón entre la corriente y la corriente crítica Josephson. Sin embargo, en el último caso se encuentra que al disminuir la razón entre las corrientes desde un valor mayor a 1 se presenta una bifurcación homoclínica.

Calvert K and Simandan D (2010) Energy, space, and society: a reassessment of the changing landscape of energy production, distribution, and use Journal of Economics and Business Research XVI(1), pp. 13-37.
ABSTRACT: While geography has always mattered for the energy sector, the relative effects of location and distance on the economics of energy regimes are increasing as we begin to deploy more renewable energy technologies. This reintroduction of the friction of distance is leading to an energy landscape that is far different from fossil-based regimes. The new energy paradigm, based as it is upon the physics and the economics of renewable energy, is being reflected in the landscape as distributed, decentralized, and diversified patterns of energy generation. Because the increased use of renewable energy technologies is beginning to change the spatial patterns of political and socioeconomic activities, a thorough understanding of these patterns is crucial to increasing the socio-political acceptability of new technologies and to avoiding the socially costly unintended consequences of policy and investment decisions.  This paper proposes a theoretical foundation upon which economists and economic geographers could scaffold their analyses of the spatial characteristics of the economics of energy use.  To this end, we bring together two complementary conceptualizations of economic geography: firstly, as the study of the effects of location and distance on energy economics, and secondly, as the study of the ways in which political, economic, and technological energy-related practices give rise to particular spatial patterns of socio-economic welfare. We end the paper by developing the concept of energy rationality and showing how it relates to discussions of metarationality, common sense, and wisdom.

The determination of the concession period (CP) in public–private partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects presents complexities to decision makers because various critical success factors (CSF) are involved which may be overlooked. This paper outlines a system dynamics (SD)-based approach to provide an in-depth understanding of CSFs that determines PPP projects' CP and models them for localized use. The CSFs are obtained from published literature, duly vetted through a survey of 56 experts, and used to develop a quantitative and qualitative SD model, validated by simulating case studies of five infrastructure projects. A total of 59 concession-affecting CSFs are highlighted that are reduced and compared for localized infrastructure projects. The findings indicate that CP should be dynamic instead of fixed and static, and warrant an extension of the originally proposed concession in three cases and reduction in the remaining two. The decision-making implications of this study target the three key stakeholders: the public body through reduced financial risks, the private organization through increased confidence and reassessment of concession during project life, and the end user through nominal tolls.

Tourism development through optimal tourism strategy is a goal of several economies irrespective of their political orientation, social development, or cultural diversity. Influences of tourism are visible in a large variety of industries, on both local and global levels. Development of a tourism strategy is based on different scenarios, model development, and a validation of the model. In order to obtain the results that can later be applied to a real tourism system, we need an optimal tourism strategy. The main aim of this paper is to show the implementation of a different approach in developing tourism strategy by using system approach. The appropriateness and transparency of modelling and a system dynamics methodology will be shown and applied to a general tourism system. The system dynamics models will be developed and presented as the illustrations of the discussed methodology.

The construction industry contributes significantly to energy consumption and carbon emissions. Moreover, people spend more time inside buildings, so their health is increasingly influenced by
indoor environmental conditions. When considered through these lenses, the concept of total building performance can span energy consumption, the associated CO2 emissions, and indoor environmental quality (IEQ). At the individual project level, building underperformance with respect to energy and IEQ is frequent, and the ex post performance gap is partially attributed to the construction project management and operations phase of the building lifecycle. This  underperformance motivates the research of this paper into the construction process outcomes in terms of energy performance and IEQ, and ways to reduce the performance gap. The paper develops a multi-methodology framework to analyse the effect of building development project
process on energy performance and IEQ from an operations management perspective. The framework couples system dynamics modelling of construction project management to building
performance modelling. The paper details the way they are coupled, the application steps and data requirements, so that they can be applied on a case by case basis. The aim is to combine operations management to building performance disciplines and deliver insights for industry
practitioners and policy makers.

Alignment of Information Systems with organizational objectives and strategy is a key factor for the success of information systems. However, most health facilities have not aligned their Health Information Systems to organizational-wide strategic goals and objectives. This has led to challenges such us poor planning, lack of resources and above all the lack of direction by top management in implementing and using Health Information Systems. This research involved an assessment of the requirements for strategic alignment of health information systems in health facilities, development and validation of a strategic alignment model using selected health facilities.
A multi-method research approach involving the use of quantitative and qualitative methods was used. The quantitative approach provided quantitative data that was used to generate requirements for the development of the model, as well as validating and testing of the system dynamics model. A sample of 408 respondents was taken from 39 health facilities in Uganda to participate in the study. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and presented in tables and graphs. The requirements for strategic alignment of Health Information Systems were identified as proper planning, establishment of policies, frameworks and standards, resource mobilization, establishment of work processes, training and sensitization of staff members about Health Information Systems work processes. Further, there is need to minimize time lag between HIS and other integrated organization information systems, improve on useful features and functions of HIS and also ensure the system covers all functions of the health facility. The study proposes a model, which when well used can help to improve the strategic alignment of Health Information Systems in health facilities.

Indonesia is part of a marine biodiversity hotspot where millions of coastal communities rely on marine resources for food security and livelihoods. The overarching objective of this study is to explore policy interventions that might help small-scale fishing communities in Indonesia to avoid or escape from an undesirable livelihood state. Selayar Island in South Sulawesi was used as a case study where intensive fishing activity occurs at the proximity of marine reserves and presenting problems and responses that are difficult to interpret due to the lack of data for this region. This four-year study used qualitative and quantitative data collection methods and the principles of systems thinking to examine the social-ecological systems that drive trends in the condition of the marine resources and the associated livelihoods.

This research is based on four main activities. First, problem-scoping focus group discussions (FGD, n=12) were held in 2015 in fishing-dominated villages (155 participants) to develop ‘rich pictures’ that help define the consensus and dimensions of the problem. Drawing on the perceived past trends of resources and activities, and problems that receive the greatest attention extracted from the rich pictures, the problem of interest was defined as ‘declining reef fisheries.’ Secondly, in separate months in 2015 and 2016, two series of problem mapping FGDs were held in eight of the fishing villages (~ 230 participants); these involved a group model building activity to capture the ‘mental information’ about the structure of the problematic system (the variables, the direction and polarity of influence between variables, the perceived past and future trends of these variables).

Thirdly, qualitative modelling was done by constructing causal loop diagrams (CLD) to analyse feedback interactions between variables in the system by using the results of problem mapping and a supplementary interview. The CLD identified 26 feedback loops (16 reinforcing and 10 balancing); 13 state variables that normatively define whether the problem is weakening or increasing; and several archetypical systems structures, including ‘fixes that fail’, ‘shifting the burden’, ‘limits to success/growth’, and the ‘tragedy of the commons’. These four outcomes maintained a path-dependence archetype. The feedback generally suggests that a social-ecological trap (SET) is responsible for the ‘declining reef fisheries’ problem in Selayar. Hence, the system is normatively resilient in maintaining an undesirable livelihood state.

Lastly, quantitative modelling was performed using computer-aided stock-and-flow modelling (SFM) for simulating the dynamics of the problem as conceptualised under the archetypes (the base case model). The SFM was constructed using the CLD as a seed structure to represent a generic model of small-scale fishery households (SSFHs) to simulate compound events associated with three types of SSFH that use boats with a smaller or larger motor and target three fish species groups originating from four habitats. The base case was defined by optimistic (ideal) estimates of ecological parameters mainly based on proxy information, as well as social parameters mainly based on recent household survey datasets and grey literature. The 30-year base case projections from the year 2016 suggest that, under business-as-usual conditions, Selayar’s SSFHs could become ‘locked’ in an undesirable livelihood regime: maintaining profitable fishing operations would become infeasible under declining resources, and result in sub-par household living standards.

Three policy interventions were then modelled and applied to the base case model, including: improvement of the alternative occupation (Policy-1), surveillance of destructive fishing (Policy-2), and marketing of local fish landing (Policy-3). As an individual intervention, Policy-1 generates higher household incomes and a lesser number of fishers, but leads to an increased fishing effort among the remainder of the fishers, including destructive groups; Policy-2 led to a reduction in destructive fishers and a higher fish catch rate, but the improved income stream remains below the living standard; Policy-3 resulted in a more profitable fishery overall, although it led to local habitat degradation and fish depletion. Modelling demonstrated that these trade-offs could be avoided if policies are implemented together (i.e., the ‘Strategy’). The Strategy model promotes long-term livelihood state trajectories that avoid SET through avoiding episodes of household financial crisis and at the same time the maintenance of local fishing activity without eroding local fish stock.

In summary, this study expands the available data and demonstrates that desirably resilient livelihood systems based on SSF are possible with a combination of policy interventions. Due to the degree of uncertainty in the dynamic model assumptions and parameters, one should exercise careful consideration when adopting the model output values (mainly the threshold points) when systems would become qualitatively different. This study will be useful to researchers/practitioners interested in developing the model to reflect conditions at finer spatial and temporal resolutions or further researching the system component or processes in order to fill the research gap, with particular reference to the Selayar Island context.

Prior to a crisis situation, family members often state that they will not have a loved one placed in a long-term care facility (nursing home care); however, when the situation arises, what enables some family members to hold true to this statement and others unable to follow through? This paper explores the complex decision-making process that family members may go through while caring for a loved one with dementia. Decisions may fluctuate as the challenges resulting from behavioral changes characteristic of different stages of dementia (specifically Alzheimer's disease) occur. This paper combines system dynamic modeling and agent-based modeling to represent a notional model of older adults with dementia and their associated caregivers. A caregiving stress and coping paradigm and current policy provisions are used to inform the decision-making process family members may experience while making the decision to become caregivers and maintain community-based caregiving responsibil...

The current growth in present time due to globalization of markets means more competition for companies especially those in developing economies that have limited analytical tools for business decisions. Market demand uncertainty affects the performance and behavior of the planning processes used by production to satisfy sales. This uncertainty and the resulting instability in the production schedules affect the relationships with the suppliers from whom the company purchases raw materials and component parts. In order to solve the problem, this research developed a SCM system dynamics model that helps business managers and researchers in SCM make better and informed decisions for close life cycle products. The work is focused on the study of behavior of replacement in a supply chain related to closed life-cycle products by system dynamics, that are goods produced and sold and if any defect is found the product is replaced. This study includes the effect of replacement in profit and other variables. This work also includes the development of a model in the system and validation of the model. In this model the relation of the variables like customer, demand, cost, price is studied and the work is focused that what will be the optimum value of the defected product. It has been assumed that if we want to decrease the defected product the cost of the production will increase and that will reduce the profit and if we want to increase the defect the no of customers will decrease and their demand will decrease and this will decrease the profit.

This intervention contributes to recent work in urban geography that integrates the conceptual frameworks of assemblages and actor-network theory by highlighting two additional directions that require a more rigorous and detailed theorization. The first direction concerns the relationship between contingency and necessity in urban assemblages and actor-networks and this paper delineates four specific propositions as a starting point for further reflection. The second direction suggests that urban assemblages and actor-networks require a more explicit vocabulary for thinking about competition and cooperation within and between cities. To this end, the paper introduces a new concept – delayed asymmetric counterforces – that can foster a better understanding of competition-induced urban change and destabilization. The novel concept is developed in conjunction with a typology of delays in competitive urban dynamics, which helps illuminate how delayed asymmetric counterforces are both a cause and an effect of the complexity inherent in the urban realm.

The United Kingdom building sector has been challenged to retrofit a huge stock of existing buildings in order to increase its adaptive capacity for climate change impacts. Addressing such challenges will require systematic structural changes in both, socio-technical and socio-political infrastructure. A numbers of studies have suggested the approach of strategic niche management of transition for sustainable technological regimes. Accordingly, any such transition would follow processes: early stages of niche formation; creation of policy mechanism required to harness the niches; niche expansion into incumbent regime; and the regime transition into more sustainable technological regime. Following this, the UK Government has introduced a raft of initiatives; one of which is " Green Deal " to enable buildings to become energy efficient through retrofit technologies, ultimately contributing towards the national goal of achieving 80% reduction in carbon emission by 2050. This paper serves three purposes. First, the paper introduces multi-level socio-technical system for construction/retrofitting in building industry. Second, the ex-ante strategic niche management approach has been used to analyse the dynamic of " Green Deal " initiative. Thereby the paper would critically assess technological, organisational and institutional reforms undertaken for the initiative in the processes for sustainable socio-technical transition. Third, the paper would contribute towards strategic niche management literature which lacks in practical examples of using it as an ex-ante tool for niche building and regime transition.

A model for enhancing natural intelligence to increase probability of success in any project. Part 2-Application of the model towards integral developmental projects that alleviate rural poverty and violence. Presented at the UNVEN-WSU 1st International Research Conference 2015-09-02, East London, South Africa. Paper in preparation.

A paradigm for optimal state-space reconstruction with nonuniform time delays is proposed. A comparison based on a diffeomorphic measure and a smoothness cost function shows that the proposed methodology achieves a better reconstruction compared to a reconstruction based on time delays that are multiples of the first minimum of mutual information. It is also shown how the proposed methodology is a more reliable approach to determining the embedding dimension.

Revisa los principales conceptos de aplicación de esta tecnología tanto a nivel aeronautico, en vuelo suborbital planetario, aeroespacial: como lanzador transatmosférico monoetapa con despegue y aterrizaje horizontal, tipo aeronáutico, como para aplicaciones de espacio profundo, hacia la conquista integral del sistema solar a mediano plazo, como para la viabilización definitiva del viaje a las estrellas.

En esta investigaciòn se propone una nueva metodologìa para describir y analizar el crecimiento léxico. Se da un seguimiento longitudinal a cada palabra y  se muestran tendencias en comportamiento como una tendencia general: El mapa dinàmico
Esta propuesta una propuesta diferente al viejo anàlisis variabilidad vs tiempo. Aquì se tratan tiempo y variabilidad como ejes fundidos.

Accident costs are an important component of external costs of traffic, a substantial part is related to fatal accidents. The evaluation of fatal accident costs crucially depends on the availability of an estimate for the economic value of a statistical life. This paper aims to develop a model for road accident through systems dynamics approach. To build an accident model, various factors causing the road accident and cost were identified. This model is capable of calculating the accident rate and its costs for the future. In this study the accident caused by bus alone is considered. The cost model is dealt more in this study as it requires more complex assessment. The accident model is built on the year 2000 data and predicted the accidents up to 2020 for every 5-year interval. The accident model is valuated by comparing the predicted and actual accident data for the year 2005. Three scenarios were studied by changing the income growth rate and discount rate. Finally, best scenario is suggested for implementation. The outcome of the study is highly useful for the planners, administrators and police to make their decisions effectively for road safety investment projects.

The construction of computer models has become an increasingly useful, and popular, way of testing theories in the cognitive sciences. This paper intends to give a brief overview of the methods for testing computer models for not only efficiency, but also for appropriateness.  Examples will focus on theoretical continuity, stress testing, and data replication. Special focus will be given to its application to data gathered in the field and when social multi-agent AI may be less appropriate than other forms of computer modeling/AI within the sub-field of the cognitive science of religion. Of particular interest will be how to spot and combat “garbage in-garbage out” modeling and what measures should be taken to negotiate the inverse relationship between specificity and ecological validity of computer models.
This paper will present critiques of models that have already been developed as well as those still in development and how close attention to both method and theory allow for computer modeling to supplement the toolbox of cognitive scientists interested in human social phenomena.

Systems thinking (ST) is an interdisciplinary domain that offers different ways to better understand the behavior and structure of a complex system. Over the past decades, several publications can be identified in academic literature, focusing on different aspects of systems thinking. However, two critical questions are not properly addressed in the extant body of ST literature: (i) How to conduct the content analysis exclusively to derive the prominent statistics (i.e., influential journals, authors, affiliated organizations and countries) pertaining to the domain of ST? (ii) How to get better insights regarding the current and emerging trends that may evolve over time based on the existing body of ST literature? To address these gaps, the aim of this research study is to provide a comprehensive insight into the domain of systems thinking through bibliometric and network analysis. Beginning with over 6000 accumulated publications, the analysis narrowed down to 626 prominent articles with proven influence published over the past three decades. Leveraging rigorous bibliometric tools analysis, this research unveils the influential authors, leading journals and top contributing organizations and countries germane to the domain of systems thinking. In addition, citation, co-citation and page rank analysis used to rank top influential articles in the area of systems thinking. Finally, with the aid of the network analysis, key clusters in the existing literature are identified based on the research areas of systems thinking. The findings of this research will serve as a bluebook for practitioners and scholars to conduct future research within systems thinking context.

A részvételi szemlélet, az érintettek bevonásának igénye az utóbbi években nemcsak a társadalomtudományban, hanem számos más szakterületen is egyre erősebben jelentkezik. Írásunkban azt mutatjuk be, hogy a részvétel hogyan párosul egy sajátos modellezési módszertan, a rendszerdinamika iskolájával, amely belső nézőpontból vizsgál komplex rendszereket. E módszertani iskola hagyományaiban mindig is erős volt a gyakorlati problémák iránti orientáció, a megrendelői csoportokkal való közös munka, így a részvételi rendszerdinamika ennek folytatásaként tekinthető. Az érintettek bevonását számos érvvel indokolhatjuk: normatív alapon (a részvétel demokratikus jog), szubsztantívan (érintettek bevonásával jobb minőségű tudáshoz juthatunk), instrumentálisan (az érintettek részvétele elősegíti a sikert), továbbá a részvétel transzformatív aspektusainak kiemelésével (a folyamatban a közösségek és a kutatók egyaránt tanulási folyamaton mennek keresztül, és megnő a társadalmi tőke is). Három részvételi rendszerdinamikai iskolát tárgyalunk meg részletesebben. Ezek közül a csoportos modellépítést professzionális, gyakorlatias módszernek nevezhetjük. A részvételi rendszerdinamikai modellezés közpolitikai gyökerű és az érintettek intenzív bevonására törekszik. A közösségalapú rendszerdinamika iskolája a közösségek megerősítésében látja a célját, hosszú távú kutatói elkötelezettséggel.

This paper deals with identification of multivariable fractional order systems. The state space model is used, based on the Guidorzi canonical form. An output error identification approach is used, and the parametric sensitivity functions model is developed as a multivariable fractional model. Its simulation is carried out using the fractional bounded integration operator. Different simulations test the method efficiency, and its statistical performance is analyzed, using Monte Carlo simulation at various signal-to-noise ratios.