Ventana software support forum

Hi Guenther I just had a look at your links page - quite impressive. How about adding a heading "System Dynamics and Environmental Management"? I would be very interested to see if anyone other than us has web resources on this. To start this set of links, you might include the following, ...

Colleagues At the recent SD conference in New Zealand, there was significant interest in the formation of a Sustainability Interest Group for people with an SD focus. At the (informal) meeting that talked about this, it was decided to set up a listserver to support a community for dialogue. In a rus...

Hi George, Interested to hear about the model of energy implications etc. Australia went to Kyoto with the "Megabare" and Gigabare" models of our economy, and the sob-story that reductions in emmissions would cost mega- or giga- jobs. Unfortunately, it seems that that particular model...

Colleagues For those of you who have got annoyed with Windows version of iThink/STELLA when it comes time to do your documentation, I have found a useful and cheap ($25 USD) utility that makes it very easy. Called HyperSnap-DX, this little program is a terminate and stay resident utility that is act...

Colleagues Both George Backus and John Gunkler make a lot of sense on this question of eliciting ownership. First, a comment on Johns observations: >1. It is middle managers who kill the change. And it makes sense that it >... >2. Introducing change (that will stick) in an organization is not much l...

Colleagues A theme I find common in much learning literature is that the great complexity of real world problems necessitates the use of computers to aid in decision making. And yet, when applying computer technology to problem solving with community environmental resource management groups here in ...

The idea of realtime SD interaction via the internet is an interesting idea. It would only appeal to a particular (small?) market niche though. It will be interesting to observe whether this type of innovation is enough to get the success to the successful archetype firing for the SD community gener...

Dear colleagues A colleague on an Action Learning list has made the following comment. QUOTE I have seen some significant critiques of SD as THE answer from some of the Complexity and Chaos texts. Again I am at the limits of my knowledge here, but I think they regard SD as a special case of a more g...

Hello all and Happy New Year! Working with groups of people involved in public management issues like Integrated Catchment (Watershed) Management and local government planning we are frequently asked where has all this been done before? The all this is a learning systems approach using causal loop d...

Dear Colleagues, The Australia New Zealand Society for Ecological Economics is pleased to announce a new Ecological Economics electronic mail discussion list for its membership and all other interested people. The list is intended as a forum through which researchers, government decision makers, com...

Isnt this a great discussion! CLDs or Stock/Flow - what is it to be? I feel I should chip in with my own two bobs worth as we have found some interesting things in the work here. Some colleagues and I have been active in the public policy and planning area, particularly as it pertains to questions o...

Dear Luis Thank you for your comments on the work you are doing in Mexico. I am particularly interested in the municipal government scene. We have recently run a training course for local government planners entitled "Integrative Learning Process for Planning". We presented a variety of ma...

Hi folks I am interested in Bruce Campbells comments below. >Another area with which Im going to have to come to grips with is that >of convincing the company what these leverage points are. Ive been told >that it is politically unaceptable to involve senior management in >systems thinking workshops...

From: John Wolfenden I wrote: >However, the purpose of using difference equations is that they offer a = =3D >tractable method of dealing with complex non-linear systems, since for = =3D >any dt the feedbacks in the system under review can be treated as =3D >linear. =20 To which Joel Rahn replied: &...

George Richardson wrote: "In fact, a system dynamics model *is* a model of the form dX/dt =3D = f(X,p), where X is a vector of n states (levels), f is a (usually nonlinear) n-dimensional function, and p is a vector of parameters. System = dynamics models are systems of differential (or, if you ...

I have just read about a simulation package called EZ-IMPACT. This is = discussed in an article by Stark, C.R. and Seitz, W.D. "EZ-IMPACT: A = judgment based program for public input in resource management and = modeling", _Society and Natural Resources - an international journal_, = no 4,...

Colleagues, You might be interested in the way we are doing "it" here in OZ (well, at least in my bit of OZ). My PhD is principally in ecological economics with a focus on finding better ways of developing policy for complex environmental problems. Since ecological economics embodies the n...