Analysis on Sustainable Development of Small Watershed in Mountain Area by System Dynamics

System dynamics (SD) methods, from qualitative causal loop diagramming to quantitative simulation modeling, have the potential to be powerful tools for engaging community stakeholders interested in improving health. However, the extent to which SD drives collective action to improve community health is unclear. The objective of this review was to understand how often, why, and how SD has been used by cross-sector community collectives. Of 409 identified manuscripts describing application of SD to community health, only 31 (7.6%) documented cross-sector collective use of these tools. All 31 had as a purpose using SD to better understand community health problems, but only seven (22.6%) documented a collective action taken as the result. In nine of the 31 articles (29.0%), no learning, decisions, or action was documented. The most common form of collective participation in SD work among the seven collectives reporting resulting action was building the SD model, with implementing a new program or practice the most frequently mentioned collective action resulting. Cost and access were the most common system outcomes studied, and chronic diseases and prevention were commonly mentioned as the focal health outcomes. Overall, SD methods seem underutilized for engaging cross-sector collectives in addressing complex community health problems.

This paper reviews how concepts and techniques of system dynamics are being applied in new ways to analyse the operations and formation of artificial and societal systems and then to make decisions about them. The ideas and modelling methods to describe natural and technological systems are mostly reductionist (or ‘bottom-up’) and based on general scientific principles, with ad-hoc elements for any particular system. But very complex and large systems involving science, technology and society, whose complete descriptions and predictions are impossible, can still be designed, controlled and managed using the methods of system dynamics, where they are focused on the outputs of the system in relation to the input data available, and relevant external influences. For many complex systems with uncertain behaviour, their models typically combine concepts and methods of bottom-up system dynamics with statistical modelling of past or analogous data and optimization of outputs. System dynamics that has been generalized by advances in mathematical, scientific and technological research over the past 50 years, together with new approaches to the use of data and ICT, has led to powerful qualitative verbal and schematic concepts as well as improved quantitative methods, both of which have been shown to be of great assistance to decisions, notably about different types of uncertainty and erratic behaviour. This approach complements traditional decision-making methods, by introducing greater clarity about the process, as well as providing new techniques and general concepts for initial analysis, system description – using data in non-traditional ways – and finally analysis and prediction of the outcomes, especially in critical situations where system behaviour cannot be analysed by traditional decision-making methods. The scientific and international acceptance of system methods can make decision-making less implicit, and with fewer cultural assumptions. Topical examples of systems and decision-making are given.

Private investments are critical enablers to achieving energy access for over 770 million people worldwide. Despite decreasing capital costs, investments in renewable energy (RE) projects in developing countries are low due to unattractive risk-return profiles. Through understanding key risks drivers and their interactions, actionable insights can be drawn to mitigate investment risks, making energy more accessible.This paper reviews RE risks and methods used for risk assessment and mitigation for developed and developing countries with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa countries (SSA). The review finds that while risk analysis and evaluation mainly employed semi-quantitative multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) and system dynamics (SD) methods for developing countries, qualitative methods were used to identify mitigations. The methods assessed technical and economic risks at a minimum, while MCDA and SD methods can assess social, political, and policy risks. The efficacies of mitigations were tested using SD and quantitative methods such as agent-based modelling and Monte Carlo simulation.The paper further introduces a ‘holistic multi-dimensional investor risk management framework’ which can be used to identify actions to improve investment risks in a structured manner. The framework addresses four fundamental limitations observed in the existing literature, recognising that RE risks are complex and involve multidisciplinary perspectives having interactions and feedbacks with other risks, actors, and their actions.This review provides a valuable reference to investors, policymakers, and researchers, providing a catalogue of risks, methods deployed in literature, including a framework to identify impactful actions to improve risk levels.

With rapid sponsorship and widely spreading of sustainable development theory, the research on the sustainable development indicator systems and its evaluation became increasingly an important issue for small watershed. Small watershed was thought to be the most basic operation unit for watershed sustainable development realization, building its sustainable development indicator system was regarded as the basic approach of realizing its sustainable development. Taking Puwa small watershed as study object, this paper quantitative analysis that the status of small watershed sustainable development by using AHP-PCA method. In this paper, taking AHP-PCA method as a powerful tool, by calculating comprehensive evaluation values of sustainable development as well as objective analysis of the level of sustainable development in different years the sustainable development situation of Puwa small watershed was evaluated. Corresponding strategies were put forward to supply relational decision-making departments with reference.

PurposeThis study aims to explore the conceptual framework of the agricultural products live streaming e-commerce ecosystem and construct a theoretical model of the agricultural product live streaming e-commerce ecosystem based on system dynamics. The research findings provide recommendations for the sustainable development of the agricultural product live streaming e-commerce industry.Design/methodology/approachThis study proposes a conceptual model of the agricultural products live streaming e-commerce ecosystem, analyzes the predation, mutual-benefit, competition, and parasitism relationships among the subjects, such as live streaming platforms, agricultural live streamers, and multi-channel network (MCN) agencies in the system, and uses system dynamics methods to establish causal circuit diagrams and simulation models. Reveal the development trends of key industrial indicators and the extent to which ecological relationships affect the system from 2016 to 2046.FindingsThe simulation results indicate: (1) During the period from 2016 to 2046, all key indicators in the agricultural products live streaming e-commerce ecosystem have shown an upward trend; (2) Competition and parasitism relationships have the most significant impact on the system, while predation and mutual-benefit relationships have a relatively weak influence. In practice, priority should be given to supporting live streaming e-commerce platforms and multi-channel network (MCN) agencies to promote the sustainable development of the industry.Originality/valueThis study employs the system dynamics method and, through qualitative and quantitative analysis, reveals the development laws of the live streaming e-commerce industry for agricultural products, and puts forward practical suggestions, providing a new perspective for research in the field of dynamic development.

The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is an integrated software package applied by many enterprises as an operations platform over the past years. However, according to an industrial survey, the failure rate of ERP system implementation is relatively high because of high implementation costs and long implementation time, incapable implementation teams, process misfits, resistance to change and inadequate training. This paper proposes a Value Engineering (VE)-based framework that combines the System Dynamics (SD) method to support implementation of ERP systems. Within the framework, VE is a systematic, functionally oriented method for generating decision alternatives, whereas SD can simulate the possible outcomes in terms of the generated decision alternatives so that a suitable strategic decision for the ERP implementation can be evaluated and selected. The proposed method is applied to a SAP R/3 implementation case in the manufacturing industry. The application case shows that the method can achieve a positive result indicating the high value-added output of ERP systems implementation.

Modeling and dynamic assessment on sustainable development of drainage enterprise: Application of a coupled system dynamics- comprehensive assessment model

A network dynamic analysis (NDA) method is developed in this paper to reveal the inherent mechanism of project governance risk control, which integrates the method of social network analysis and system dynamics. Specifically, project governance structure was expressed as a social network in which the nodes indicate each stakeholder in the project and the relationships between nodes represent stakeholders’ risk control responsibility for the other party. The method of system dynamics is applied to capture the change of risk factors and the resulting adjustment of network relationships. To show how the NDA method is applied to project governance risk control, a simulation example is given and results indicate valuable theoretical and practical implications.

The discussion is confined in scope to absolutely irreplaceable assets. Topics include peculiar problems of mineral wealth, free competition, maximum social value and state regulation, monopoly, value of a mine monopoly, retardation of production under monopoly, price effects from cumulated production, and the author's mathematically derived optimum solutions. (PCS)

This paper provides a review on modeling electricity markets with System Dynamics (SD) focusing on deregulated electricity market models. First the SD method is classified within the wide field of electricity market modeling. Then all distinctive properties of the SD method in this context are elaborated. After an overview of first SD models in energy economics, a comprehensive review of models of deregulated electricity markets is presented. The review captures more than 80 publications in the field of SD energy market modeling. Some tendencies could be identified: Firstly SD models are more and more combined with other methods like generic algorithms, experimental economics or analytical hierarchy processes. Secondly, stochastic variables are considered increasingly. Thirdly, models show a higher level of detail and increasingly evaluate aspects such as new markets designs or new market components and their interdependencies.

Nuclear power plants for hydrogen production are investigated in the aspect of nuclear safety. The non-linear dynamical safety assessment is introduced for the analysis of the high temperature gas cooled reactor (HTGR) which is used for hydrogen production as well as electricity generation. The dynamical algorithm is adjusted for the safety assessment with an easier and reliable output. A feedback of power increase affects to the temperature decrease. The top event of the event is power and temperature stable. It is affected by the human factor, poison, and some other physical variables. There are several factors including the economic and safety factors which are considered for the reliability of the modelling simulations. Using the system dynamics (SD) method, the event quantification is performed for the event flows, stocks, and feedback by the single and double arrow lines.

The power increase in the nuclear power plants has been investigated for the safety aspect. Most equipment could be affected by the power uprate, which could increase the electricity power level. The quantification of the uprate reliability is performed by the system dynamics method, which is processed by the feedback and accumulation algorithms. The Vensim software package is used for the simulations, which is made by the Monte Carlo method. There are two kinds of considerations as the economic and safety properties. The result shows the stability of the operations when the power can be decided. This shows the higher efficiency of the reactor. The maximum value of risk is 157,887 in 2065 and the minimum value is 2 in 2010. Thus, the risk of the power uprate increases 78,954 times higher than the initial value in this study.

Remanufacturing processes are one of the key pillars of the so-called closed-cycle economy. Unfortunately, the design and organization of such processes pose a significant problem, due to, among other things, the high variability of the process as a consequence of both the degree of wear and tear and the quality of the remanufactured components. This article presents a method for optimizing the flow of the brake caliper remanufacturing process in the MTO (make-to-order) model. For the optimization process, the system dynamics (SD) method, which belongs to a group of simulation methods, was used. The developed model allows, in particular, the prediction of the number of components at the input to the regeneration process and the method of defining the size of the transport batch and evaluating its impact on the length of the production cycle of the batch of regenerated products. The issues of staffing management at individual positions and the organization of transport operations with variable production batch sizes were also discussed. The provided experiments have shown that reducing the size of the transport batch contributes to shortening the production order execution time, both with standard and increased staffing.

This paper analyzes the suburb tourism trend based on system dynamics method. It applies SD (system dynamics) method in system analysis, which starts with problempsilas structure and discarding trivialities. An empirical study is made to find the trend of suburb tourism due to new holiday policy. The finding of this paper is very useful for local authorities who want to facilitate the development of local tourism.

Bidding strategy of energy storage in imperfectly competitive flexible ramping market via system dynamics method