European Masters in System Dynamics 2016
New University of Lisbon, Portugal

Simple model to represent oyster individual growth by simulating feeding and metabolism.

Marine plastic is rapidly increasing due to increasing production and use of plastic in all economic activities, short use times and long life times of plastic, and large mismanagement of plastic waste. With this, the threat plastic poses to the marine biosphere is also increasing and will continue to increase over a long time into the future. Risk knowledge is limited and risk perception and awareness are not resulting in significant mitigation efforts. The case study will aim at modeling the use and life cycles of plastic and the transport paths that lead to plastic entering the ocean. The models will be used to simulate possible futures based on a scenario approach. The results of these efforts will be visualized with the goal to increase risk awareness.

This model simulates the growth of carp in an aquaculture pond, both with respect to production and environmental effects.

Both the anabolism and fasting catabolism functions contain elements of allometry, through the m and n exponents that reduce the ration per unit body weight as the animal grows bigger.

The 'S' term provides a growth adjustment with respect to the number of fish, so implicitly adds competition (for food, oxygen, space, etc).

 Carp are mainly cultivated in Asia and Europe, and contribute to the world food supply.

Aquaculture currently produces sixty million tonnes of fish and shellfish every year. In May 2013, aquaculture production overtook wild fisheries for human consumption.

This paradigm shift last occurred in the Neolithic period, ten thousand years ago, when agriculture displaced hunter-gatherers as a source of human food.

Aquaculture is here to stay, and wild fish capture (fishing) will never again exceed cultivation.

Recreational fishing will remain a human activity, just as hunting still is, after ten thousand years - but it won't be a major source of food from the seas.

The best way to preserve wild fish is not to fish them.

Westley, F. R., O. Tjornbo, L. Schultz, P. Olsson, C. Folke, B. Crona and Ö. Bodin. 2013. A theory of transformative agency in linked social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 18(3): 27. link

A simulation illustrating simple predator prey dynamics. You have two populations.

This model prototypes the working of an Smart Grid with Electric Vehicles

The objective is testing the theoretical advantages of batteries (also batteries in Electric Vehicles) in combination with renewable energies. The model considers two houses, that store energy both in Electric Vehicles (Vehicle to Grid), and in a communal battery.

Except when specified otherwise, the units of all variables are expressed in W/h.

Press "Story" in the lower bar for a guided tour over the model. Better seen at 50% zoom.

by Carlos Varela (cvarela@gmx.at)

Simple population dynamics examples based on ​Lotka-Volterra equations.

The time-variable solution to a step-function change in inflow concentration for an ideal, completely mixed lake.

My AP Environmental Homework for the Cats Over Borneo Assignment

Simulate an impact of an asteroid of any Diameter at any given Speed!

Simple mass balance model for lakes, based on the Vollenweider equation:

dMw/dt = Min - sMw - Mout

The model was first used in the 1960s to determine the phosphorus concentration in lakes and reservoirs, for eutrophication assessment.

Challenges in sustainability are multilevel.
This diagram attempts to summarize levels of self reinforcing destructive dynamics, authors that deal with them, and point of leverage for change.

The base of the crisis is a mechanistic rather than ecological worldview. This mechanistic worldview is based on outdated science that assumed the universe to be a large machine. In a machine there is an inside and an outside. The health of the inside is important for the machine, the outside not. In an ecological view everything is interconnected, there is no clear separation in the future of self and other. All parts influence the health of other parts. To retain health sensitivity and democracy are inherent. The sense of separation from other that keeps the mechanistic worldview dominant is duality. Being cut off from spiritual traditions due to a mechanistic view of science people need access to inter-spirituality to reconnect with the human traditions and tools around connectedness, inner discovery, and compassion. Many books on modern physics and biology deal with the system view implications. "The coming interspiritual age" deals with the need to connect spiritual traditions and science.

At the bottom for the dynamic is an individual a sense of disconnectedness leads to a dependency on spending and having rather than connecting. The connecting has become too painful and dealing with it unpopular in our culture. Joanna Macy deals with this in Active Hope. 

This affluenza and disconnection is worsened by a market that floods one with advertisements aimed at creating needs and a sense of dissatisfaction with that one has.

National economies are structured around maximising GDP which means maximising consumption and financial capital movement. This is at the cost of local economies. These same local economies are needed for balanced happiness as well as for sustainability.

Generally institutions focus on maximising consumption rather than sustaining life support systems. David Korten covers this well.

Power and wealth is confused in this worldview. In striving for wealth only power is striven for in the form of money and monopoly.

Those at the head of large banks and corporations tend to be there because they exemplify this approach. They have few scruples about enforcing this approach onto everyone through wars and disaster capitalism. Naomi Klein and David Estulin documented this.

Power has become so centralized that we need this understanding to be widespread and include many of those in power. Progress of all of these levels are needed to show them and all that another way is possible.

The following insight shows the level of crime in the town of Bourke in comparison to the levels of Police and Community Engagement

Westley, F. R., O. Tjornbo, L. Schultz, P. Olsson, C. Folke, B. Crona and Ö. Bodin. 2013. A theory of transformative agency in linked social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 18(3): 27. link

This stock and flow diagram is an updated working draft of a conceptual model of a dune-lake system in the Northland region of New Zealand.

The following insight shows the level of crime in the town of Bourke in comparison to the levels of Police and Community Engagement

This model is a classic simulation of the production cycle in the ocean, including the effects of the thermocline in switching off advection of dissolved nutrients and detritus to the surface layer.

It illustrates a number of interesting features including the coupling of three state variables in a closed cycle, the use of time to control the duration of advection, and the modulus function for cycling annual temperature data over multiple years.

The model state variables are expressed in nitrogen units (mg N m-3), and the calibration is based on:

Baliño, B.M. 1996. Eutrophication of the North Sea, 1980-1990: An evaluation of anthropogenic nutrient inputs using a 2D phytoplankton production model. Dr. scient. thesis, University of Bergen.
 
Fransz, H.G. & Verhagen, J.H.G. 1985. Modelling Research on the Production Cycle of Phytoplankton in the Southern Bight of the Northn Sea in Relation to Riverborne Nutrient Loads. Netherlands Journal of Sea Research 19 (3/4): 241-250.

This model was first implemented in PowerSim some years ago by one of my M.Sc. students, who then went on to become a Buddhist monk. Although this is a very Zen model, as far as I'm aware, the two facts are unrelated.

Westley, F. R., O. Tjornbo, L. Schultz, P. Olsson, C. Folke, B. Crona and Ö. Bodin. 2013. A theory of transformative agency in linked social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 18(3): 27. link

In Chile, 60% of its population are exposed to levels of Particulate Matter (PM) above international standards. Air Pollution is causing 4,000 premature deaths per year, including health costs over US$8 billion.

HANDY Model of Societal Collapse from Ecological Economics Paper 

A model of an infectious disease and control