
For example, the human body avoids disease by foreign agents, repairs itself after injury, and survives in a wide range of temperatures and food conditions.
The wider the range of conditions, the more resilient the system. Think of resilience as the range of conditions in which a system can perform normally. Hierarchy: the arrangement of a system into layers of systems and subsystemsĬreating systems that ignore these three properties leads to brittleness, causing systems to fail under changing circumstances.
Self-organization: the ability to make itself more complex. Resilience: the ability to bounce back after being stressed. They can persist for long periods without any particular oversight, and they can survive changes in the environment remarkably well. Systems are capable of accomplishing their purposes remarkably well. Critique of donella meadows thinking in systems how to#
How to model extraction of a renewable resource, such as fish in the sea. How to model extraction of a non-renewable resource, such as fossil fuels. Delays introduce oscillations into system behavior, as in a car sales manager trying to keep her inventory consistent. One stock + two balancing loops represents a thermostat keeping a room’s temperature. Birth rate could also fall due to social factors, such as lower interest in raising children or fertility issues. For instance, during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, projections of populations in areas with high HIV prevalence had to account for higher mortality. A lethal, contagious disease could drastically increase the death rate. Therefore, poorer countries with high current birth rates may not retain high birth rates as their economies develop. Data suggests that as countries get wealthier, birth rates fall. If they are equal, the population will stay the same.ĭifferent circumstances can drive the relative strength of the birth or death loop:.