Young Modeler
Sharing stories about system dynamics, agents' behavior and other modeling curiosities
By Angelika Schanda
Located in Vienna, Austria
Co-Founder at Art of Cooperation / YoungModeler.net
European Master in System Dynamics graduate 2013-2015
Are you ready for some exciting news for our Young Modeler community? After taking on the worlds of blogging and live-stream interviews, we’ll add yet another format to our outreach and educational efforts by (co-)hosting a series of Read more ›
By Angelika Schanda
Located in Vienna, Austria
Co-Founder at Art of Cooperation /
European Master in System Dynamics graduate 2013-2015
From optimization to change strategy?
15-17 October 2018 in Brussels, Belgium
There are few large systems science conferences in the world, and one of them is particularly rare: The International Congress of the European Union for Systemics is only held once every three years. This year, the conference organizers were not shy of addressing the elephant that has been rattling the European Union at its own foundations: crises. While the introduction to the conference starts off with a concession that the topic of crisis has been exhaustively addressed over recent years, it immediately makes clear why it is worthwhile to dedicate yet another congress to this topic: “A lot of Read more ›
By Wang Zhao
Located in Lisbon, Portugal
European Master in System Dynamics candidate 2017-2019
Modellers face a problem: Too few of their models ever get reused. Meanwhile, many projects start by building a new model from scratch requiring plenty of research to conceptualize the model structure. If we see these two aspects from the perspective of ‘supply’ and ‘demand’, is there any ‘mismatch’ in between that hinders models from reuse? If so, what could be the reason?
Most system dynamics models Read more ›
By Khaled Gafaar
Located in Lisbon, Portugal
European Master in System Dynamics candidate 2017-2019
My first semester in EMSD was nothing short of a revelation. I’ve been reading in Systems Thinking since 2012, attempted to apply principles of The Fifth Discipline in an organizational setting (2013-2014,) and had to forsake my career in one of the largest FMCG companies in the world to pursue this Master’s!
In the modelling world, you can model the world, but would you really want to?
It is a general guideline in System Dynamics to build our models as concise and compact as possible, to avoid adding further complexity to the problem solving process. Beyond the issue of size, a series of interesting questions present themselves Read more ›
By Igor Oliveira
Located in Lisbon, Portugal
European Master in System Dynamics candidate
The first semester of the European Master in System Dynamics (EMSD) has been my first intensive experience with dynamic modelling. During our first three courses in Bergen, we learn the fundamentals of system dynamics, replicate classic models and have the opportunity to conduct a mini-project by building our own model to interrogate a real world problem that interests us. My project was focused on the emergence of climate conflicts in Africa, in the context of changing land use patterns and ethnic tensions.
As someone who had long been inspired by systems thinking in my consulting practice but had not yet focused on learning modelling techniques, the first striking lesson for me was Read more ›
By Angelika Schanda
Located in Vienna, Austria
Founder at Art of Cooperation – Institute for Impact Partnerships
European Master in System Dynamics graduate (Class 2013-2015)
The systems science and computer modeling communities are diverse and widely dispersed all across the globe. Therefore, it has always been the mission of this blog to connect people beyond classrooms, organizations, regions and disciplines. We are constantly looking for new ways to create meaningful connections, which is why we are excited to announce the start of a new series of participatory live stream interviews with our authors: “Meet the Modeler”!
In these interviews, your interests and input counts! We’ll be asking Read more ›
By Jonathan Nichols
Located in Lisbon, Portugal
European Master in System Dynamics candidate
In studies using a system dynamics approach, we often build computer models to seek explanations for complex dynamic problems and search for leverage points where we might target our interventions. If our models can reproduce the problematic behaviour we’re interested in, and our model structure is a justifiable approximation for how things work in the real world, we’re off to a good start. However, building a computer model is an iterative process of trial and error, requiring creativity, dedicated research, analytical prowess and the courage to expose the assumptions we might be staking everything on. It is a highly rewarding process, but along the way Read more ›
By Jonathan Nichols, Igor Oliveira, Khaled Gafaar, and Henrique Beck Valdivia
Located in Lisbon, Portugal / Palermo, Italy
European Master in System Dynamics candidates
“The size of your model doesn’t matter and other deep insights” is a new series beginning this March on the Young Modeler blog. In monthly releases, candidates from the European Master in System Dynamics program will be sharing some of their challenging ideas on modeling and system dynamics. These articles will invite discussion in the run up to the 2018 System Dynamics Conference taking place in Reykjavík, Iceland this summer. Start participating now by subscribing to the blog, sharing this post on your social media platforms, and keep a look-out for the first release! Read more ›
By Guido Noto
Located in Pisa, Italy
Post-Doc at Institute of Management, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies
Business Models, intended as formal conceptual representations of how an organization functions, are designed to offer a static perspective of value creation processes. This prevents start-up entrepreneurs from framing the complexity, uncertainty and unpredictability of the business sectors in which they operate, Read more ›
By Bramka Arga Jafino
Master Candidate in Engineering and Policy Analysis
Delft University of Technology
Being introduced to and having fallen in love with System Dynamics back in 2013, I’m excited that I finally will manage to attend the International System Dynamics Conference, #ISDC16, for the first time this year. The conference will be held from July 17 to July 21, 2016 in Delft, The Netherlands. The main theme of the conference is “Black Swans and Black Lies: System Dynamics in the Context of Randomness and Political Power-play”. Academics, consultants, practitioners, students, managers and policy makers from across the globe will discuss their work, especially with regard to how System Dynamics is applied in systems that are full of uncertainties and how the approach is orchestrated in a multi-actor, political context. You can see the numerous works that will be presented in here and the tentative schedule here. Read more ›
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