The full set of session descriptions will be published in the hardcopy package distributed upon registration in San Jose in July. Some advance descriptions have been provided by energetic session organizers
[Sunday] | [Monday] | [Tuesday] | [Wednesday] | [Thursday]
Sunday
[S3-1 -- Enhancing Interoperability of Systemists] |
[S4-1 -- Systemic Consulting Reloaded: SoYouKnow] |
[S5-1 -- Systems theory and our minds] |
[S1-4 -- Cultural-Biological Matrix of Human Existence]
S3-1 -- Workshop on Enhancing Interoperability of Systemists: An exercise in Conceptual Blending of General Semantics and General Systems Theory
Workshop Organizers: Jack Ring, Steve Krane, and Len Troncale
No additional costs to registered participants of ISSS Meeting. Any non-conference participants, please contact the ISSS office at isssoffice@dsl.pipex.com for registration instructions.
Purpose
Regarding key facets of system science this workshop will engage participants in exercises designed to increase their a) degree of mutual understanding, b) readiness for knowledge exchange and c) ability to foster similar interoperability in their respective local contexts.
Intent
We will not strive to converge on one standard language regarding the myriad aspects of systems and the creation and evolution thereof. Instead, we will explore various ontic views and seek the semantic equivalences and transformations that demonstrate ways by which diverse tribes can interoperate for knowledge exchange and coherent choice.
We will use World Cafe and Nominal Group Technique to engage participants in workgroups that will organize examples of system terminology into meaningful (to them) relational networks, cross brief the other working groups, and exercise conceptual blending techniques for unifying the field of discourse.
Participation
This workshop is open to a wide variety of viewpoints and experiences among members of our respective professional organizations and their guests.
Products
- Artifacts:
- Resulting work products will be made available on ISSS and INCOSE web sites as appropriate.
- Knowledge:
- Intended outcomes are a) Make participants more productive and innovative in systems work, b) Enable participants to conduct similar sessions in their home communities, c) Motivate vigorous research and effort at “disambiguation” in the systems field, d) Identify some simple tools for the toolboxes of interested participants and e) Encourage more participation in three specific projects of the INCOSE System Science Working Group (WG) and two ISSS SIG’s (Special Interest Groups).
- Level of Consciousness
- Also, we anticipate that participants in this Workshop will be more prepared to get the most out of the ISSS 2012 Conference, particularly the Monday and Tuesday afternoon and evening sessions.
Method:
Rather than presenting ‘answers’ for participants to accept or reject organizers will prepare ‘questions’ for which the participants can devise responses and share their various perspectives.
The lists of questions will be prepared by the session organizers by drawing on issues evident in a) the work done to date, b) prevailing standards, guides and handbooks, c) pre-workshop surveys and d) other literature.
Participants will receive a brief introduction to concept mapping as a tool for organizing thinking and debates.
Participants will a) form trios, b) receive lists of 10-15 words each representing labels for key concepts in the systems field of discourse c) arrange these into concept maps that represent ‘patches’ of candidate semantic commitments in our overall field of discourse.
The trio’s will cross-brief the other trio’s to compare and contrast the maps and highlight opportunities for clarification and unification.
The trio’s will arrange the respective concept maps on the wall and explore options for ‘stitching’ the respective maps together.
Session organizers will prepare an outbrief for the Conference plenary and for publication in the ISSS Bulletin and INCOSE INSIGHT.
Agenda
- Phase 1: System Properties and Characteristics
- We will spend approximately 1 hour on lists that reflect ‘man made’ systems. This will further the work of the SysSci WG Project, Toward a Unified Ontology for Systemists. Continuing from the INCOSE SysSci WG effort and the recent IFSR Conversation, project participants will pursue the conceptualization and design of a knowledge exchange medium that will enable multiple persons having diverse backgrounds to create systems composed of multiple components from diverse sources. The objective is not to devise one standardized language nor a meta language for interoperable local languages but to devise a languages normalization method that can be devised and used by the participants in any given system project.
- Phase 2: System Processes
- We will spend approximately 1 hour on lists that reflect the extensive System of System Process (SoSPT) work that has been led by Len Troncale. This INCOSE SysSci WG project has the goal of devising a common framework for synthesizing or unifying extant systems theories and natural science evidence into one, consensual knowledge base for systems science that describes in greater detail how systems work and remain sustainable.
- Phase 3: Systems Pathologies
- We will spend approximately 1 hour on lists that reflect systems pathologies as led by Len Troncale. This INCOSE SysSci WG project has the goal of initiating a unique, new field of top-down systems pathology by identifying discipline-, domain-, tool-, and scale-independent diseases (dysfunctions) of systems-level architecture. It will seek to provide details of symptomatics, etiology, prognosis, and treatment alternatives for each systems disease.
- Phase 4: Reflection on Contemporary Semiotics
- The foregoing results will provide context for (15 minute each) reflections on Miller’s Living Systems Theory (LST) (by McDavid), Rosen’s R-theory extended (by Kineman), Palmer’s restatement of Troncale’s SoSPT (by Palmer) and the IFSR 2012 Conversation on System Praxis (by Janet Singer). Reflection will encourage participants to discover how each might find commonalities, differences, and points of consensus to attempt a partial synthesis as action research into unification efforts across the systems community.
S4-1 -- Workshop on Systemic Consulting Reloaded: SoYouKnow- (Socialise your knowledge)
Workshop Organizers: Louis Klein, Elke Umbach
No additional costs to registered participants of ISSS Meeting. $50 for non-conference participants, please register for this stand-alone registration at ISSS Workshop Registration.
As a prelude to this year’s ISSS Conference in San Jose we would like to invite individuals working in the field of systemic consulting to a one-day workshop. With a Socialise your knowledge-workshop we are aiming at creating a one-day forum for the exchange of knowledge, experiences, and challenges in the implementation of systemic approaches in consulting. Our goal will be to explore the impact of applied systemic models, to challenge and test these concepts and through joint discussion define space for further development. Questions on the gap between scientific models and their implementation in practice will be addressed, and we will have a chance to take a closer look at the impact and lessons learnt of specific methods, instruments and products. Together with experienced colleagues from various backgrounds we will approach the successes and challenges in our field and sketch future scopes of application. At the same time our workshop offers a platform for cooperation and networking within the worldwide community of systemic consultants.
During the day we aim to create a common knowledge basis through socializing and sharing individual experiences. In this way each participant will generate an immediate benefit and embrace new notions for own projects. While the workshop is set-up as part of the ISSS conference, external guest are welcome to participate and share their valuable experiences.
This workshop is scheduled to start at 10 a.m., and conclude by 5:00 p.m.
Fee:
- For ISSS conference attendees:
- Included at no additional charge
- For guests:
- $50, including lunch
Facilitators
- Dr. Louis Klein
- Louis is a leading expert in the field of social complexity, a dedicated scientist and an international management consultant. His focus is with complex projects, and systemic change management on a global, cross-cultural stage. He is chairperson for the ISSS Special Integration Group ‘Systems Applications in Business and Industry’. Louis is CEO of Systemic Excellence Group with offices in South Africa, Germany, Nepal and China.
- Elke Umbach
- Elke qualified academically as a sociologist. She is an experienced senior business consultant and management coach. Her rich toolbox ranges form group dynamics to process consultancy and complex change management. Elke is MD of Systemic Excellence Group Office Frankfurt, Germany.
S5-1 -- System theory and our minds - The search for the begining of natural Systems in human history
Workshop Organizer: Thomas Sui Leung WONG, E C Yan HUANG
No additional costs to registered participants of ISSS Meeting. $30 for non-conference participants, fee to be collected at workshop.
The beginning of life has been a key research topic throughout human history, and the answer may lies in the begining of natural systems. The composition of our body and that of our mind may be explained by the same system theory relating energy, matter, life and information. We employed this simple ancient system theory as taught by Buddha to investigate how our naturally systemic-structured mind artificially developed all this non-systemic and problematic thinkings. We use our body to experience the world around us but our mind is the one who is observing and making the decisions to change the world. System theory sees the world composed of the observer, the decision maker, the system, the environment, the boundary and the relationships between them. And there are two opposite forces in the world that constantly interacting with each other, creating the flow of energy, matter and information between systems and the environment. On one hand we have the disorder force governed by the second law of thermodynamics that drive everything into a equilibrium state with maximum entropy. On the other hand we have the organizational force governed by the constrains of a system that drive the system into a particular desired steady state with a low entropy.
Our mind are both the observer and the decision maker with a major problem. Throughout our life we have been looking for satisfaction that brings happiness. Our government have been relying on economics to achieve this but 80% of the time we are dis-satisfied with the people and situations around us, bringing craving, aversion and ignorance into our minds and creating all sorts of problems in our society. This is called suffering in the teaching of Buddha, and he offered us with a three step solution for our mind. In this workshop we investigate the systemic view of these three step namely self protection, concentration and purification of our mind. We also investigate a 10 days Vipassana mental healthcare program for people of all religions including scientific communities. It is believed such a program could bring happiness, peacefulness and harmony for our community.
Death is the end of our lives or just the beginning of another new life? A system undergoes a transition of system state upon death, but will the system continue in other forms at other places? Or will it just terminate totally? What are the possible new system states and are they sustainable? In this workshop we will investigate the sustainability of Heaven, Hell, Earth and Nibbana (null). And we investigate the way to prepare ourselves to transit into these states.
Fee:
- For ISSS conference attendees:
- Included at no additional charge
- For guests:
- $30, payable at workshop
S1-4 -- Preconference Address: Cultural-Biological Matrix of Human Existence
Speakers: Humberto Maturana Romesín and Ximena Dávila Yáñez
We proposed the notion of Cultural-Biological Matrix of Human Existence (CBMHE) the year 2000 when we realized that it was not possible for us to understand humanness if we did not accept that humanness is in its very origin a cultural-biological manner of living. Manner of living that must have begun with the origin of language in an ancestral family of bipedal primates more than three million years ago, and that has been conserved from generation to generation in the learning of children as a family way living in languaging and conversations.
When we speak of systems we speak of collections of elements interconnected in such a way that if we act on one we act on all. However, we usually speak of systems treating them thinking in lineal terms missing their continuous multidimensional transformation. Accordingly we propose an approach to the reflection on natural phenomena that keeps our awareness of the recursive nature of their spontaneous transformation and change.
Following this approach it is possible to see that as humanness arose in the interlacing of the bipedal primate biology with languaging and conversation in some ancestral family, humanness arose from its beginning as having an integral multidimensional biologic-cultural systemic nature in its manner of living. And it is possible to see as well that this manner of living defines as well the nature of their living in social and not social communities.
What is social living? Social living occurs in the constitution of communities of living together held by the fundamental emotion of reciprocal acceptance, as a domain of living together in which its members become individuals, and that is at the same time the result of individual living together. In particular in human social communities the individual that integrate it become persons that as individual can reflect about their living in it, and can consciously chose to remain in it or leave it according to whether they fin themselves living in it in well-being or not. When we speak about the nature of human living we speak of the cultural-biological matrix of human existence (CBMHE).
The understanding of the systemic dynamic of the cultural-biological matrix of human existence opens the possibility of seeing both the lineal coherences of the locality in which one lives, and the systemic recursive network of the multidimensionality of the operational relations that constitute the social existence in which one’s locality occurs. Finally, the understanding of the CBMHE how is it that whenever something biological occurs to a human being his or cultural living changes, and whenever something cultural happens in the life of a human being, his or her biological living is affected.
Speakers
- Humberto Maturana Romesín
- studied Medicine at University of Chile and then moved to University College London to study anatomy and neurophysiology. In 1958 he received his Doctorate in Biology at Harvard University. In 1994 he received the National Award in Sciences in Chile.
- Ximena Dávila Yáñez
- studied individual and family counseling with a specialization in “work place relationships” at the Instituto Profesional Carlos Casanueva (ICC). Her interest for comprehending the origin of cultural pain for which people ask relational help, lead her to create the path of “Liberating Conversations”.
Monday
[M2-2 -- Unifying Systems Theories] |
[M3-2 -- Service Systems, A Theory of the Offering, and Coproduction] |
[M3-4 -- Health and System Thinking] |
[M4-4 -- Exploring Living Systems Awareness through Movement and Creative Expression]
M2-2, M2-3, M2-4 -- Workshop on Unifying Systems Theories
Session leaders: Len Troncale, Janet Singer
No additional costs to registered participants of ISSS Meeting. Any non-conference participants, please contact the ISSS office at isssoffice@dsl.pipex.com for registration instructions.
One of several official, ongoing projects of the Systems Science Working Group (SSWG) of INCOSE (the International Council on Systems Engineering), perhaps the one closest to the traditional objectives of the ISSS, involves a team effort at unifying extant systems theories. Accomplishing this task is considered critical to systems science becoming a core component of the education of systems engineers, systems biologists, systems chemists, earth systems scientists, sustainability specialists, and systems designers in a broad range of social science disciplines. It also involves assembling a massive database that links the elements of those theories to the extensive results of the natural sciences to better achieve a “science” of systems and improve system design.
This session invites abstracts, presentations, and papers that: (1) suggest criteria for recognizing and/or taxonomically organizing ST’s; (2) identify candidate ST’s or critique a candidate ST; (3) describe protocols or methods that enable more rigorous comparison of candidate ST’s; (4) specify a “framework” for integrating existing ST’s; (5) contrast domains, disciplines, scales, and tool-related aspects of particular ST’s; (6) document or provide tools for documenting sources of detailed evidence for ST’s; (7) describe the need for or utility of having a knowledge base in systems science created by a unified systems theory. These are the major categories of debate that are currently pursued on the INCOSE SSWG teams and websites engaged in this project.
We anticipate seven papers delivered in 3.5 hours. We will use the typical format of 30 min allocated per paper with a suggested 20 min .ppt presentation followed by 10 min of discussion, strictly timed. If the author chooses to use up the entire 30 min for presentation, no discussion will be possible. It is hoped that follow-up discussion of the various papers might also occur during the scheduled, joint INCOSE-ISSS Monday Evening Workshop.
M3-2 -- Service Systems, A Theory of the Offering, and Coproduction
Session leaders: Rafael Ramirez and David Ing
The science of service systems has less than a decade in development. Service Management, as first published by Richard Normann, dates back to 1984. The distinction between cause-effect and producer-product (which relates to coproduction) described in On Purposeful Systems in 1972 by Russell Ackoff and Fred Emery, has foundations in the 1959 Experience and Reflection book written by Edgar Singer and edited by C. West Churchman. Service systems science and systems theory have strong ties that may not be obvious to the unimmersed.
One of the central concepts from Normann is the offering. A 1989 chapter on “A Theory of the Offering: Toward a Neo-Industrial Business Strategy” has recently resurfaced. This writing will serve as a starting point for an informal discussion on ties between the service management perspective of Normann, and ongoing research in the systems sciences.
Participants are encouraged to read a blog post of “A Theory of the Offering, and Changes in Business Strategy in an Industrial Age, dated June 29, 2012, at http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/a-theory-of-the-offering/ . This online article provides links to the evolution of thinking through researchers including Rafael Ramirez and Johan Wallin.
Diligent scholars may sent a request to David Ing as isss@daviding.com for access to a softcopy version of Normann and Ramirez (1989).
References
Normann, Richard, and Rafael Ramírez. 1989. “A Theory of the Offering: Toward a Neo-Industrial Business Strategy.” In Strategy Organisation Design, and Human Resource Management, ed. Charles C. Snow, 111–128. J.A.I. Press. http://books.google.ca/books/about/Strategy_organization_design_and_human_r.html?id=FChHAAAAMAAJ.
Keywords: service system, offering, coproduction, producer-product
M3-4 -- Health and System Thinking -- How to service our first natural system in a systemic way
Session leaders: Thomas Sui Leung WONG, E C Yan HUANG
Reductionism was the major scientific view before world war II, its development leads to industrial revolution and modern medicine. Traditional medicine like Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurvedic Medicine, Homeopathy, Naturopathy, and Western Herbal Medicine was then considered as alternative medicine because they are seem incompatible with reductionism and allopathic medicine. However, reductionism was found to be an incomplete scientific view after world war II and a more holistic scientific view was developed namely system theory.
Systemic thinking is to consider both the system and the environment when analyzing or maintaining a system, or its environment. When analyzing a particular component within a system, all other components should be considered as well.
Traditional medicine has been analyzed with the incomplete scientific theory for logical explanations of its medical theory and practice, resulting in confusion and misunderstanding. This workshop will demonstrate the application of system theory to investigate the holistic nature of a particular traditional medicine namely Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is believed that all other traditional and alternative medicine could be better understood in this holistic scientific view of system theory.
The Taichi Yin-Yang system theory was developed when combining both the traditional Chinese thinking and the systemic thinking. Taichi is considered as the organizational force in the universe, and the Yin-Yang combo is considered as the log2 information gathering process, the current state determination process, and the steady state regulation process.
According to the Taichi Yin-Yang system theory, the Taichi(Yin, Yang) structure should be used in all analysis. The possible analysis of health system are:
- Health(physical, mental) - the Cold-Hot spectrum
- Health(chronic, acute) - the Deficient-Excess spectrum
- Health(external hygiene protection, internal healthcare protection) - the Superficial-Internal spectrum
Healthcare is our first service system in human history. This workshop will introduce a systemic service program called Traditional Chinese Medicine Healthcare Protection Program which is simple and effective for promoting in the community. Helping the poor with money will never be enough, but helping the poor to make money themselves is a more permanent solution and may even have a positive feedback to the helper. A internal healthcare program should teach the community how to take up the responsibility of their own health in a simple and effective manner. The Traditional Chinese Medicine Healthcare Protection Program composed of three components:
- the TCM diet on how to choose food from the Cold-Hot food spectrum,
- the TCM Taichi exercise therapy on how to regulate our body and Chi (Qi) from the fully Open-Close movement spectrum,
- the TCM 24h healthcare lifestyle on how to use our health wisely for work and fun from the Human-Environment spectrum.
M4-4 -- Exploring Living Systems Awareness through Movement and Creative Expression
Session leader: Barbara Widhalm, Ph.D., and members of the San Francisco School of Biodanza
How can we experience the organizing principles and language of life (living systems principles), with our whole being, including our bodies, hearts, and souls, so that we are better prepared as change agents in an increasingly unpredictable world? One approach that awakens a felt sense of vibrancy, aliveness, and connectedness with all life, is a holistic system of movement called Biodanza. Biodanza, which means Dance of Life, integrates music, movement and authentic interactions to provide experiences of intense perception of being alive in the here-and-now. These experiences are known as vivencias, coined from the Spanish root: vivir (to live). Vivencias follow the organic movements of life—its biological rhythms and organic patterns and flows of nature, the pulse of the heart, and the impulse to connect with others. Biodanza originated over 40 years ago in Chile and Brazil, under the wings of anthropologist, psychologist, and poet Rolando Toro Arenada and has spread since then to five continents. The Biodanza system is grounded in living systems theory and was particularly inspired by systems scholars Varela, Maturana, and Capra. In her dissertation Nature as Guide to Vibrant Learning, the facilitator explored Biodanza as a living system rich in autopoietic, emergent properties that can enhance education for a healthier world. In fact, Biodanza-inspired “biocentric education” is practiced in Latin America and Europe.
Come experience living systems awareness holistically and joyfully! In this session, the workshop facilitators will first introduce the main organizing principles of living systems and then guide participants through a journey of experiencing living systems awareness through movement, music, and connection with ourselves, others, and the world.
Tuesday
[T2-2 -- Developing Systems Pathology] |
[T3-3 -- Complexity and Sustainability]
T2-1, T2-2, T2-3 -- Workshop on Developing Systems Pathology
Session leaders: Len Troncale, Janet Singer
No additional costs to registered participants of ISSS Meeting. Any non-conference participants, please contact the ISSS office at isssoffice@dsl.pipex.com for registration instructions.
One of several official, ongoing projects of the Systems Science Working Group (SSWG) of INCOSE (the International Council on Systems Engineering) is on the new field of top-down, systems-architecture-based Systems Pathology. This is also one of the SIG’s of the ISSS. “Systems Pathology as Systems Science” was introduced at the ISSS in presentations each year from 2000-05, and in presentations at the International Conference for Complex Systems (ICCS) of NECSI in 2004 and 2006. The New England Complex Systems Institute, ISSS, and INCOSE are interested in progress in this new focus as a way to diagnose dysfunctional systems and to design better systems or fix systems that are not working.
This session welcomes papers that:
- (1) identify and discuss the key questions for research in developing systems pathology;
- (2) provide a more rigorous definition or markers of the “health” of a system;
- (3) identify specific, cross-disciplinary, scale-independent dysfunctions/diseases of systems (naming identifiable diseases is always the first order of business);
- (4) describe the particular “symptoms” for a particular dysfunctional system;
- (5) suggest an ontology of diseases or taxonomy of related systems-level diseases or otherwise classify related groups, clusters, or classes of such dysfunctions;
- (6) relate a dysfunction of a system to its etiology (causes);
- (7) relate a particular systems-level dysfunction to possible “treatments” and “prognoses.
We anticipate seven papers delivered in 3.5 hours. We will use the typical format of 30 min allocated per paper with a suggested 20 min .ppt presentation followed by 10 min of discussion, strictly timed. If the author chooses to use up the entire 30 min for presentation, no discussion will be possible. It is hoped that follow-up discussion of the various papers might also occur during the scheduled, joint INCOSE-ISSS Tuesday Evening Workshop.
It is also hoped that a critical mass of systems engineers and systems scientists will join together at this meeting to inaugurate a new professional society, the American Society for Systems Pathology (ASSP). Initial policies, procedures, programs, and products will be discussed as well as practical matters such as dues, marketing, and business office arrangements.
T3-3 -- Complexity and Sustainability: Problematizing synergistic solutions to global social and environmental crises
Session leader: Jennifer Wells
The workshop will discuss a complex dynamic systems framework as a source of inspiration for more deeply understanding the nature and potential for synergistic, cross-systems, win-win-win solutions, such as integrated economic, ecological, social and technological approaches to multiple interacting social and environmental crises. I focus on a particular set of major complexity principles, and a couple of case studies related to climate change.
First I will flesh out the complex dynamic systems framework. People are familiar with parts of this, but this particular framework is innovative in its transdisciplinary scope and applications; it is distilled from complexity theories across the natural sciences, social theory, and philosophy. Therefore, it is well adapted, for highly complex socio-ecological issues, such as climate change. There are over sixty core principles, including: feedbacks, thresholds, networks, hierarchies, emergence and self-organization.
Second, I will give examples about how the framework helps to elucidate climate change, focusing on the nature of singular and multiple intersecting feedbacks, and thresholds, both ecological and social. I look at policy examples, how the framework might articulate the multifaceted aspects of a few projects to transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy systems in Western Europe. These case studies reveal how this framework is central to understanding both the climate change economics and policies.
Third, I will mention a couple of critiques of synergistic approaches. One critique is the intrinsically challenging qualities of hypercomplex social issues, including problems with the way we perceive, think and feel environmental issues and global change. It is challenging to apply rigorous thinking about the many transdisciplinary facets of climate change, political, ethical, social and cultural, as well as environmental. A second critique is that complexity theories themselves highlight the problems of inherent uncertainties and unknowability; the observer in the system; and other profound epistemological challenges.
I give a brief response to each of these critiques. Complexity theories are not a silver bullet, and not the only part of the solutions that we need. We must also confront issues like domination, greed, and evil. While complexity theories tend to highlight challenges and difficulties, they also provide tools for navigating and advancing our thinking about these challenges. While various aspects of the framework may seem insufficient to the great complexity of problems we are facing, the entire framework in its ensemble provides a much stronger perspective from which to explore changes to our visions, narratives, lifestyles and world system.
Finally, I would like to open the floor to discussion and debate, both on the utility of the framework, and the question of focusing on synergistic solutions.
Wednesday
[W2-1 -- From Hazard to Disaster and Back to Normal] |
[W3-3 -- Human Systems are Different: Andras Angyal via Eric Trist]
W2-1 -- From Hazard to Disaster and Back to Normal
A roadmap for the ISSS SIG “Systemic Approaches to Conflict and Crisis”
Session leader: Gerhard Chroust
Awareness of threats and the occurrence of actual disasters (many caused by nature but often triggered by human activities) have become more acute during the last decades, endangering a growing number of persons and areas in many more diversified ways. In many cases we observe that a secondary disaster, triggered by the primary disaster, is often more devastating than the first one (examples are the tsunami in Fukushima, economic problems due to a volcano prohibiting air traffic, an economic decline due to the cost of a natural disaster etc.)
In order to cope with these threats we need a systemic approach to the analysis of vulnerabilities in our society in all their dimensions and ramifications and the design of appropriate reaction strategies for actual disasters. This implies to
- predict and anticipate potential vulnerabilities and design adequate resilience strategies,
- analyze and identify vulnerabilities with respect to secondary hazards,
- prepare appropriate emergency plans and training programs for the general public and for intervention personnel based on accumulated knowledge and empirical best-practices,
- provide during an intervention robust and fault-tolerant planning and communication means for status information and logistics,
- consider psychological and cultural differences and problems,
- plan and anticipate appropriate post-disaster recovery activities.
Today’s information and communication technologies (ICT) can support and improve above activities, sometimes in ways not anticipated before (e.g. use of social media). They allow for speedy aggregation, simulation, interpretation, and presentation of information as a basis for logistic support for intervention personnel.
We invite you to attend this session in order sketch a roadmap for this SIG for identifying alternate, synergetic and counterproductive approaches to the above topics. We invite you to bring to the session a short statement of instructive and interesting approaches or challenges (presentation time maximum 5 minutes with a maximum of 3 foils) as a basis for for intensive, interdisciplinary discussion of the issues.
To allow for a minimum of planning I would appreciate a short note containing : name, working title of contribution and if ncessary a few additional keywords.
For more information please contact Gerhard Chroust, Johannes Kepler University Linz, gerhard.chroust@jku.at
W3-3 -- Human Systems are Different: Andras Angyal via Eric Trist
Session leaders: David L. Hawk and David Ing
One of the teams at the 2012 IFSR Conversation focused on “Revisiting the socio-ecological, social-technical and socio-psychological perspectives”. (See http://ifsr.wordpress.com/team-1/ ). In that conversation, Merrelyn Emery said that many systems thinkers in the 1970s were all studying the writings of Andras Angyal (i.e. Foundations for a Science of Personality, 1941) as a more enlightening source than the better-known Ludwig von Bertalanffy.
This workshop will piece together an appreciation of how and why Angyal was considered to be a foundational reference for systems thinking in the 1970s. A description and extensions of Angyal's work were summarized by Eric Trist in a festschrift to Russell Ackoff in 1992.
Interested participants should plan on reading Trist (1992). For the location of an online cached softcopy, please contact David Ing at isss@daviding.com .
References
Angyal, Andras. 1941. Foundations for a Science of Personality. The Commonwealth Fund. http://books.google.ca/books?id=eUkBAAAAMAA.
Trist, Eric L. 1992. “Andras Angyal and Systems Thinking.” In Planning for Human Systems: Essays in Honor of Russell L. Ackoff, ed. Jean-Marc Choukroun and Roberta M. Snow, 111–132. University of Pennsylvania Press. http://books.google.ca/books?id=gi3tAAAAMAAJ.
Keywords: trist, angyal, human systems, wholes
Thursday
[R3-3 -- SOARS Tutorial]
R3-3 -- SOARS Tutorial
Session leaders: Hiroshi Deguchi and Manabu Ichikawa
SOARS – Spot Oriented Agent Role Simulator – is a new type agent based simulation language, which requires no skills of programming languages. This simulation language is designed for everyone to use easy and what all you have to do to use it is to study few hours to get some basic skills for modeling. SOARS also supports making web based a simulation of gaming. For gaming creators, SOARS helps you to make computer based gaming easily. To get more information about SOARS, please visit SOARS Project Official Website, http://www.soars.jp/.
In this tutorial, we are going to introduce the history, the concept and some social simulation models of SOARS, and also teach how to make a social simulation model by SOARS. We are planning to make a basic model, which we called “family model”. In this model, daily activities of members of a family are represented. The model simulates their daily life visually. The tutorial gives you the concept of social simulation and basic skill to build an agent-based simulation model by SOARS.
