Almost 35 years have passed since J. W. Forester published his paper “Industrial Dynamics” in 1958, which was the first paper in this field and which later became “system dynamics”. While many books and articles in the field raised its methodology, most of them have described models and discussed applications of system dynamics to specific areas. As a result, evaluation of system dynamics has been obscured by inconclusive debate about particular models. The efforts of many practitioners are leading system dynamics to a better understanding and more comprehensive presentation. But, its methodology needs further development and codification for revealing general characteristics of complex systems. Particularly, stronger links are necessary to the control theory and to enhance the system’s mathematics.This paper constructs a mathematical theory for thoroughly and precisely analyzing such general models as produced by system dynamics. First, we formulated mathematically, as the axioms of system dynamics, all principles of systems from which “general” characteristics of complex systems are generated. Secondly, we attempt to adequately express the essential mathematics of system dynamics, based on the axioms mentioned above. That is, we investigated the structural stability and the discontinuity of dynamic behavior of complex systems using the concepts in the Catastrophe Theory. And we mathematically explained some important results described in past articles of system dynamics such as the characteristics of complex systems initiated by Forester. Furthermore, we describe a new theoretical method to elucidate structural characteristics in SD models using concepts of Combinational Topology.

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Date created

• 1991

Type

• Document

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• Processing documentation available at: https://wiki.albany.edu/display/SCA/Processing+Ingested+Digital+Files

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• Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International

  
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Collection

System Dynamic Society Records

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Collecting area

• This collection is part of the University Archives