Wolst583.pdf. Index.php. WolstenholmeArchetypes.pdf. From SHIFT: My Three-Part Series on Complexity and Collapse. Graphic courtesy of SHIFT Magazine (click on the graphic to view full-screen) The third and final part of my series of articles on complexity and collapse is now up on the SHIFT Magazine site. Here’s a synopsis of all three parts, with links to the online versions of the articles: Part One: The Energy Predicament A look at our global energy and resource systems, and the complex relationship between resource prices, regulation, exploration, supply and demand, and how they are pushing us towards disastrous resource exhaustion.
An overview of how the three systems — energy/resource, economic and ecological/climate — are related. Part Two: The Economic Predicament The complexities of our global economic systems, and an exploration of whether, although it won’t ‘save’ civilization, the dismantling or crumbling of our current industrial growth economy, sooner rather than later, might lessen the hardship and suffering of drastic climate change that we and our descendants are likely to face. System dynamics. Dynamic stock and flow diagram of model New product adoption (model from article by John Sterman 2001) System dynamics is an approach to understanding the behaviour of complex systems over time. It deals with internal feedback loops and time delays that affect the behaviour of the entire system.[1] What makes using system dynamics different from other approaches to studying complex systems is the use of feedback loops and stocks and flows.
These elements help describe how even seemingly simple systems display baffling nonlinearity. Overview[edit] System dynamics (SD) is a methodology and mathematical modeling technique for framing, understanding, and discussing complex issues and problems. Originally developed in the 1950s to help corporate managers improve their understanding of industrial processes, system dynamics is currently being used throughout the public and private sector for policy analysis and design.[2] History[edit] Topics in systems dynamics[edit] Causal loop diagrams[edit] Feedback. "...'feedback' exists between two parts when each affects the other... "[1](p53) Feedback is also a synonym for: Feedback signal – the measurement of the actual level of the parameter of interest.Feedback mechanism – the action or means used to subsequently modify the gap.Feedback loop – the complete causal path that leads from the initial detection of the gap to the subsequent modification of the gap.
History[edit] Self-regulating mechanisms have existed since antiquity, and the idea of feedback had started to enter economic theory in Britain by the eighteenth century, but it wasn't at that time recognized as a universal abstraction and so didn't have a name.[2] The verb phrase "to feed back", in the sense of returning to an earlier position in a mechanical process, was in use in the US by the 1860s,[3][4] and in 1909, Nobel laureate Karl Ferdinand Braun used the term "feed-back" as a noun to refer to (undesired) coupling between components of an electronic circuit.[5] Types[edit] System Archetypes - sys_archetypes.pdf. Archetypes - Interaction Structures of the Universe. Interaction Structures of the Universe This article is essentially a continuation of Systems Thinking: An Operational Perspective of the Universe in which the Reinforcing and Balancing structures were developed.
This article develops a set of frequently recurring structures resulting from various combinations of Reinforcing and Balancing structures. This article essentially represents an elaboration of the work of Senge (1990) and Pegasus Communications (1989-1996). Note that all the archetype examples that were previously wired into this article are now accessible via theWay which is considered to provide a more comprehensive treatment of the archetypes, as well as a few additional ones, and uses the "+" and "-" influence notation. Accidental Adversaries The Accidental Adversaries structure is a composed of three reinforcing loops and two balancing loops. Balancing Loop (^) The Balancing Loop attempts to move some current state to a desired or reference state though some action. Systems Archetypes v2. Success to the Successful. A Success to the Successful structure consists of two reinforcing structures which interact in such a way as for create a single reinforcing structure.
Consider a situation where there are two project managers, Jane and Tom, responsible for managing similar projects. Their manager, Sarah, has a fixed amount of resources which she allocates to their projects. Initially both projects are progressing equally well. Then, for some reason, Sarah chooses to allocate more resources to Jane's project than to Tom's. When Sarah performs an allocation to Jane instead of Tom it adds to the resources to Jane and, since there are a fixed amount of resources, it subtracts from the resources to Tom.
The resources to Tom still add to the success of Tom, but since there are fewer resources there is less success for Tom. As such the success of Jane overshadows the success of Tom and encourages Sarah to allocate to Jane instead of Tom, since she'd much rather support a winner than a loser. Examples. Accidental Adversaries Systems Archetype. Attractiveness Principle Systems Archetype. Dave Pollard's Series on Complexity and Collapse.