System Dynamics

Abstract

The world, today, is passing through a period of great turmoil, socially, politically and environmentally, in spite of the numerous technological wonders that are taking place almost everyday. One needs to take a systems view of the influencing factors and their interactions and impacts in order to find the root causes of these problems and to arrive at viable policy options. System dynamics provides such an approach. The book authored by Professor Bala, Professor Fatimah and Professor Noh presents the principles of system dynamics in very simple language and illustrates its use with the help of five real-life case studies.This book is divided into two parts. The first part of the book presents, in a very simple way and starting with the fundamental principles, how complex interactions among the interacting forces can be modelled by capturing their cause-effect interrelations through dynamic models, how the models can be simulated and evaluated to depict reality and how policy interventions can be tested for testing their viability. Although the material covered in this part of the book is not new, the examples supporting the theoretical nuances of the subject covering population growth, grain storage, food security, commodity production, food relief, crop livestock, shrimp farming, crop irrigation and pollution are very interesting and appealing.In the second part of the book, the authors discuss case studies related to the areas of agriculture, aquaculture and environment in Bangladesh and Malaysia. Both hilsa fish and rice are important for the economy of Bangladesh, just as food security and cocoa production for Malaysia. The case study for solid waste management is well chosen as it is a perennial problem in third-world countries. This part of the book is illustrative of the power of system dynamics methodology as to how it can address many complex issues of today very easily.I believe that a newcomer to the field of system dynamics will find the book extremely useful and will be highly motivated to use system dynamics and systems thinking in understanding and addressing the issues that arise out of the behaviour of systems that are integral part of their lives.

Modelling of supply chain of ready‐made garments in Bangladesh

“…Simulating such a system by a computer model, one can conduct a series of experiments. Computer models clearly are of great value to understand the dynamics of such complex systems (Bala, Fatimah, & Noh, 2017). Owing to the intrinsically complex nature of the supply chain of garments system, it is advantageous to implement management policy options only after careful modelling and simulation of different policy options.…”

“…Owing to the intrinsically complex nature of the supply chain of garments system, it is advantageous to implement management policy options only after careful modelling and simulation of different policy options. Forrester's system dynamics methodology provides a foundation for constructing computer models to do what the human mind cannot do that is rationally analyse the structure, the interactions, and mode of behaviour of complex socioeconomic, technological, and environmental systems (Bala et al, 2017;Forrester, 1968). System dynamics methodology is based on feedback concepts, and multiloop non-linear and time lagged complex systems can be handled easily.…”

“…Hence, the system dynamics approach is the most appropriate technique to handle this type of complex problem. A detailed description of the system dynamics methodology is given in Forrester (1968) and Bala et al (2017).…”

Dynamic Models for Exploring the Resilience in Territorial Scenarios

“…System dynamics model (SDM) is an operative approach for helping reveal temporal behavior of complex systems considering their non-linearity, time-delay and multi-loop structure [49,50]. SDM is based on the System Dynamics approach which was introduced by Forrester [51,52] for investigating the feedback information of industrial systems and improving the organizational form [53].…”

System Dynamics Modeling of Within-Host Viral Kinetics of Coronavirus (SARS CoV-2)

“…To develop a versatile strategy to study the complex issues of the within-host SARS-CoV-2 kinetic model, a system dynamic approach 19,20 is built through the identification and description of the different parameters, components, feedbacks and processes that drive system behavior (Table 1 ). The Stock Flow diagram, corresponding to the differential equations of the model, is presented in Appendix 1.…”