Global warming is one of the most significant issues that humans face in todays world. Even small changes in the earths average temperatures can increase severe weather events such as storms, floods and droughts, change in ecosystem, adverse impact on health and lives of human and other species. Global warming is caused by increasing concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG) in atmosphere, and cities are major contributors of greenhouse gas emission. All cities have a responsibility and a role to play in controlling the GHG emission, confronting climate change and its potential impacts. We develop a system dynamics model that can help cities better understand the causes and impacts of GHG emission within various subsystems of cities, and formulate and test effective policies for controlling the GHG emission.
Accommodation support for people with Intellectual Disability is a major component of public expenditure in the Australian welfare setting and over the past three decades there have been major shifts in the philosophy of care which have had impact upon funding policies and the allocation of resources. The signing of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has prompted a review of current programs and more comprehensive planning for improvements. A community prevalence of approximately 0.6% was established, with a baseline of approximately 0.1% of the population requiring formal accommodation support. Modeling of changes in level of intellectual impairment and levels of dependency in four age groups over the next forty years predicts a rise in the numbers of middle aged and older adults with Intellectual Disability needing accommodation support. Changes in the three forms of adult accommodation (private, state-funded disability accommodation and commonwealth-funded aged care accommodation) were also predicted by the model. There will be a substantial rise in the intensity and demand for state funded disability accommodation, as the clients themselves and their parents age. Changes in the levels of demand in each form of accommodation were estimated by what-if experimentation with changes in eligibility criteria.
Recently there has been a dramatic increase in worldwide attention to environmental issues based on climate change and global warming. This effort has resulted in advances toward a new paradigm, 'sustainable development'. Especially, Green Growth has risen as a new alternative to earlier problems. Korea has focused on the Green Growth, and several plans have been presented by the current administrations. The main purpose of this study is to find what steps are included in the agenda setting process of the Green Growth in Korea, using both time series analysis and system thinking approach. To conduct a time series analysis, the paper examines articles of newspaper and government reports. And, to build a causal map, the speech of current president of Korea is analyzed. The study concludes that the political consideration has played a major role in the policy agenda-setting process of Green Growth in Korea. In addition, it is identified that causal map analysis, as a qualitative approach, can complement the existing method for analyzing the policy agenda setting process.
This research explores the effects of implementing a lean production system in a government facility that is formally governed by accounting practices which delay recognition of production savings but which informally promotes its lean efforts through attention-getting, off-the-books, innovative accounting. We state three propositions relating to customers effects of the lean improvements and the financial approaches. We then state four hypotheses relating to unintended effects of these measures as a facilitys workload varies, and test the hypotheses employing a system dynamics simulation. We identify minor effects upon customer behavior and labor rates oscillation, thereby filling gaps in the literature relating to government productivity improvements, and expanding knowledge relating to lean labor savings, work demand, and employment effects.
As Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) had become an issue in Korea, Korean Government has decided to make a complete defense system of HPAI using system dynamics and agent based modeling techniques after a preliminary research. This paper summarizes the simulation part of the Korean Government efforts on HPAI.
In recent years, there has been an increase in the interest for fishery dynamics in the System Dynamics field but most of the work has been related to the management of wild fish stocks. In this paper, we present an exploratory study of the effect of fish farming on the stock of wild fish stocks based on the case of Chilean Salmon industry. Fish farming does not reduce the impact of fishing activities but it increases their effects since it is necessary almost 6 kilograms of wild fish for each kilogram of salmon produced.
Research on learning via system-dynamics-based learning environments depends on good measurement of learning. Most such research considers at least two aspects of learning, the participants understanding of the models and problems, and the partici-pants' performance in the environment, e.g., quality of decision making. The former, understanding, is much more difficult to measure than the latter, performance. Meas-urement of understanding is often done by eliciting verbal protocols from participants about the problem situation (i.e., the underlying model) and their planned solution strat-egy (i.e., decisions). Coding and analysis of participants verbal protocols is very sub-jective and time-consuming. To facilitate measurement and analysis of understanding via verbal protocols, we investigate the utility of a software application which performs such analysis automatically. We assess this automated analysis methodology using data from two different system-dynamics-based learning environments, including how par-ticipants understanding compares to experts, how it changes over time, and how it cor-relates with performance.
East Asians and Westerners have kept very different systems of thought for thousands of years. Generally speaking, in contrast to the mechanistic and analytic Western view, the Eastern view of the world is said to be organic. Various philosophies and religions have influenced formation of Eastern thought for thousands of years. Notably, this paper focuses on thoughts of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Yin-Yang theory and thought of Three Essences (time, space, ens). Eastern thought, in general, says that the world is, like a web, an interrelated complex system of the three essences. Therefore, according to Eastern thought, there is no space without time and ens, no time without space and ens, no ens without time and space. They are interpenetrating. The organic and ecological world view of the East Asians is very close to the systems thinking of the System Dynamics. Since, like this, systems thinking essentially has inhabited Eastern thought, Eastern Asians are relatively familiar with systems thinking in their daily life. Hence, this paper aims to seek the profound relation and harmony between ancient Eastern wisdom and modern systems thinking. Such a study could extend basis of System Dynamics across areas of Eastern philosophies.
Most models that assess the relative number of transmissions during different stages of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection assume that the transmission occurs through instantaneous sexual contacts. In the real world, however, human sexual interactions occur in the context of a complex social system, and HIV is likely to transmit through repeated sexual acts during partnerships formed and broken over time that last for varying lengths of time. We sought to understand how dynamic sexual partnerships would influence transmission dynamics during different stages of HIV infection: primary HIV infection (PHI) and asymptomatic HIV infection (AHI). Using a pair approximation technique, we developed a dynamic model of HIV transmission in a homogeneous population that includes the formation and dissolution of sexual partnerships of varying duration. The fraction of transmissions during PHI is a U-shaped function of increasing partnership duration, such that the fraction decreases as partnership duration increases up to a few years, but rises again as partnerships are further lengthened. Our results show that the dynamics of sexual partnerships strongly influence HIV transmissions by stage and models that assume instantaneous contacts will likely overestimate transmissions during PHI for real, dynamic sexual partnerships with varying (non-zero) durations.
In this paper, I discuss how to teach system dynamics and systems thinking from the perspective of the eastern philosophy, especially in Korea and China. Based on my experience of teaching system dynamics to Korean people for 15 years, I present some kind of fundamental similarities and linking pins between eastern philosophy and system dynamics. Presentation of their similarity usually provided Korean students a kind of familiar feeling with the system dynamics and facilitated their understanding of its key concepts. Also I explain my experience on presenting research outcomes of system dynamics to Koreans with the help of linking pins between system dynamics and eastern philosophy.
