Understanding population dynamics is crucial to understanding current and future health care needs and designing systems to meet those needs. In this paper, we provide a methodological approach to answering questions of population dynamics in a system dynamics model configurable to initialise in dynamic equilibrium or disequilibrium. Some questions include: how does current measured population compare to a population of the same size in equilibrium, and how would a change from current observed birth rate to equilibrium birth rate affect population levels and the dependency ratio over time? To illustrate the methodology, we apply our approach to Singapore, which is experiencing an increasing proportion of the elderly population.
The recent attempted or actual overthrow of long incumbent governments in Egypt, Iran, Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia, the continuing engagement of Western powers in a number of counterinsurgencies, and a rise in global religious, nationalist, narco- and cyber-terrorism have highlighted the continuing importance of modeling conflict, defense, and security issues. System Dynamics, because of its ability to integrate political, organizational, and material factors, is ideally suited as a vehicle to investigate these great problems. This potential, however, contrasts greatly with the relative sparseness of academic publications in this area.
The system dynamics contribution to project management research is one of the jewels of the crown with respect to our field. One of its key contributions is to understand how iteration of tasks in the form of project rework influences key outcomes measurable such as cost and timing. We build upon this tradition in a conceptual paper that suggest that other types of iteration, which are mindful and beneficial, need to be considered. When considered, two particular concerns fall out with respect to innovation projects that need further exploration by system dynamicists. One is that some projects, particularly innovation projects, may need to change scope mid-way through the project if they are to be successful, and there is no way to anticipate this ex ante. The other is that innovation projects tend to iterate in scope from project to project and that this iteration is necessary because of the escalation of market expectations. We explore the implications of these ideas and how they should impact the course of future system dynamics research.
This poster session will describe the progress of a pilot project initiated by Professor Jay Forrester through the Creative Learning Exchange. The project goal is to create online curriculum materials for K-12 students and interested adults that will illustrate the characteristics of complex systems:
This article explores the methodological issues in mixed use of Grounded Theory and System Dynamics approaches in a research project. We discuss how analysts dealing with qualitative secondary data in the conduct of System Dynamics Modeling work through the questions of the role of existing literature and generic structures in system dynamics, directions of research (inductive, deductive, or abductive), the mixed methods ability to extract system dynamics modeling information, and potential outputs of such research. These discussions are based on an analysis from an empirical research project. The article describes a research design and suggests next steps to develop a coherent analytical technique for researchers.