Environmental Systems
Organizational Matters
Model dynamic systems, understand drivers and feedbacks, and simulate potential developments.
We live in a complex, dynamic, and man-made environment. Human actions or natural events generally trigger other changes. The latter might occur at remote places or with a considerable delay. This complexity exceeds our cognitive abilities making model building an essential competence not only for Geographers. This course provides room for asking questions to environmental systems and finding answers by modelling their dynamics.
Intended learning outcomes
- to formulate questions suitable for guiding your modelling
- to model dynamic systems using a graphical notation
- to discuss the scope of application of specific models, simulations and results
- to critically evaluate limitations of educated guesses and potentials of system dynamics
- to reflect modelling as a tool for knowledge generation and decision support
Course features
The course is intended as a blended learning module in our study program. The provided introductions, explanations and examples might also be useful for self-study.
Syllabus
Systems and models | General introduction, systems and models, hands-on modelling
Deliverables
The course requires to solve problems provided as part of course assignments. The final grade is based on an essay which reflects the own submissions for the course assignments.
Acknowledgements
This course has been inspired by and partly adapted from the Road Maps course from the system dynamics group of J. W. Forrester, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Forrester 1998). This is especially the case for some working sheet structures and reading suggestions of the introductory sessions. The Road Maps documents are free for educational use.
Most of the models and parametrization are taken from another yet equally excellent book series called System Zoo written by H. Bossel (Bossel 2004a, Bossel 2004b, Bossel 2004c)