SYSTEM DYNAMICS
What is System Dynamics?
A computer-assisted approach to developing strategies and policies for effective change that employs systems thinking. It is used to help people make better decisions when confronted with complex, dynamic systems.
The unassisted human brain has only a limited capacity to assess, analyse and process complex datasets when they vary through time. For example: How will an export company best manage and benefit from changing consumer sentiment towards their products while simultaneously considering fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates and seasonally varying ingredient and transport costs? Or: How will governments best manage pandemic-scale infectious diseases as population infection rates vary and as new vaccines become available and vary in cost of production?
System Dynamics provides a way to assess the ultimate impacts of complex systems with many variables and allows more confident decision making.
System Dynamics was originally developed in the 1950’s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was an attempt to apply scientific and engineering principles to provide an objective, evidence-based basis for corporate decision-making. Since then, it has been applied to a broad range of topics including defence, public health, regional planning and, especially, environmental issues including climate modelling.
ClearWater’s Principal, Dr. Mark Rivers is an expert in the development of System Dynamics models and has constructed models and scenario-testing tools for issues including: contaminant transport processes through the air-soil-water-plant continuum; catchment-scale impacts on water quality from comparative land-use planning strategies; CO2 emission reductions from adoption of alternative transport fuels, and; economic cost-benefit analyses of environmental best practice adoption in a variety of agri-industries. He is also active in the international System Dynamics community and regularly provides peer-review of models developed by research groups around the world.
If you have a complicated system or problem in your business that you can describe to us in detail using your industry-specific expertise and experience, then we can turn that into a System Dynamics model specific to you that you can use to make decisions with much more confidence.
