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To provide instruction on key concepts and tools of systems thinking. While utilizing the WebEd site, participants will: develop skills and knowledge in the use of systems thinking concepts and tools. experience and practice interactive, inquiry-based instructional and school improvement strategies. use systems thinking tools to analyze issues and identify high leverage interventions. investigate possible applications relevant to their work.

"Our Mission: to bring economic, social and environmental systems into closer harmony with the realities of a finite planet and a globally powerful human race by using the disciplines of systems thinking, system dynamics, and collaborative learning that were pioneered by our founder, Donella Meadows."

Systems thinking, according to HU, has two important dimensions. One is the establishment of a new paradigm that understands global issues as inherently complex, multi-dimensional, conflictive and open to outside influence and intervention. A problem like slavery, for example, may seem intractable because of the economic interests it serves; in fact, the institutional and organizational linkages-the supply chains-that comprise slavery's power structure are vulnerable. The first step in system thinking is to map those linkages to better understand how they fit together and pinpoint their likely weak points. The next step is to devise a strategy that combines public advocacy, coalition building, insider lobbying, and investigative journalism to target those linkages, forcing those implicated in slavery, wittingly or unwittingly, to reform, and weakening the larger circuit of power over time.

Overview System Dynamics is a computer-aided approach to policy analysis and design.  It applies to dynamic problems arising in complex social, managerial, economic, or ecological systems-literally any dynamic systems characterized by interdependence, mutual interaction, information feedback, and circular causality.

Based in Fuzzy-logic Cognitive Mapping (FCM), users can easily develop semi-quantitative models of environmental issues, social concerns or social-ecological systems in Mental Modeler by:  Defining the important components of a system  Defining the relationships between these components  Running "what if" scenarios to determine how the system might react under a range of possible changes.

Code for America hosted Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu for a discussion of their recent book, "Gardens of the Democracy." In it, they challenge Americans to approach the world not as a machinery that needs to be perfected but as a garden that needs constant attention, discretion, and periodic weeding. The book argues that since society and technology have fundamentally changed, so must our notions of citizenship and democracy: turning "the machine" into a garden. 

When we're dealing with different interacting levels of a system, seemingly minor details can rise to the top and become important to the system as a whole. We need "Field biologists" to catalog and study detarticails and portions of our complex systems, including their failures and bugs. This kind of biological thinking not only leads to new insights, but might also be the primary way forward in a world of increasingly interconnected and incomprehensible technologies.

Systems thinking The fact that ecological sustainability is a property of a web of relationships means that in order to understand it properly, in order to become ecologically literate, we need to learn how to think in terms of relationships, in terms of interconnections, patterns, context. In science, this type of thinking is known as systemic thinking or "systems thinking." It is crucial for understanding ecology, because ecology - derived from the Greek word oikos ("household") - is the science of relationships among the various members of the Earth Household.

Learn more about the system dynamics lab at Washington University in St. Louis. We are experts in developing simulation models of problems facing complex social systems. A resource for students, professionals, and researchers, we help build the capacity of those who want to learn and apply system dynamics in order to understand and address specific problems within an organization and community. Our Research Our research includes a focus on understanding the role of social determinants at the community level, identifying strategies for reducing disparities, and informing implementation, scale-up and sustainability of evidence based interventions. Application areas include community responses to intimate partner violence, mental health, natural resources, obesity, cancer, child and maternal health, financial inclusion, K-12 education, and juvenile/criminal justice. Community Engagement We are actively involved in advancing participatory group model building (GMB) methods in diverse communities including both international and domestic settings. Teaching We are invested in building capacity in system dynamics among the next generation of researchers, policy makers, and social innovators. The lab offers a sequence of graduate level courses that prepare students to tackle dynamic social problems with innovative, design-driven, transdisciplinary solutions.

This site is designed for people interested in complex systems and complex dynamical processes. Complexity Explorables hosts different collections of interactive illustrations of models for complex systems in physics, mathematics, biology, chemistry, social sciences, neuroscience, epidemiology, network science and ecology. Topics include pattern formation, synchronization, critical phenomena, chaotic dynamics, evolutionary dynamics, fractals, collective behavior, reaction-diffusion systems and more.

"We activists need to become better "reflectivists", taking the time to understand the system before (and while) engaging with it. We need to better understand the stop-start rhythm of change exhibited by complex systems and adapt our efforts accordingly. And we need to become less arrogant, more willing to learn from accidents, from failures, and from other people. Finally, we have to make friends with ambiguity and uncertainty, while maintaining the energy and determination so essential to changing the world."

This eTextbook contains the system-scientific contents taught at the Institute of Systems Sciences, Innovation and Sustainability Research (SIS) at the University of Graz

SCiO is a community of systems practitioners who believe that traditional approaches to running organisations are responsible for many of the problems we see today. We believe that systemic approaches to designing and running organisations offer radically new and better alternatives.

Like ecosystems, financial markets are complex evolving systems from which unexpected bubbles, crashes, and other surprising behaviors can emerge. Building resilient financial systems may require policymakers to take cues from biology.

Our Theory of Change The Network is about: Building community demand for results, by mobilizing residents and stakeholders around an equity agenda creating opportunity for families and transforming neighborhoods. The Network is about higher aspirations, and about providing both the expectation of a better future as well as the connections and collective power to pursue it. Creating new connections to systems and organizations by creating new avenues and approaches for interacting with systems that otherwise pose barriers. Transforming the environment to sustain the change, creating family-centered, equitable, results-focused systems that work for all families. Holding ourselves and others accountable for what we say we are doing in community.

"About Donella Meadows founded our Institute in 1996 to apply systems thinking and organizational learning to economic, environmental and social challenges. Mission Shift mindsets - values, attitudes, and beliefs - when they are out of step with the realities of a finite planet and a globally powerful human race. Restructure systems when the rewards and incentives of the system are inconsistent with long term social, environmental, and economic goals. Build the capability to manage and learn in complex environmental, social, and economic systems."

ReThink Health believes that by thinking differently and working together, we can remake our troubled health system into one that is centered on the well-being and productivity of our people, the vibrancy of our communities, and the prosperity of our nation. This includes the delivery of optimal, affordable, and accessible care. We also believe that the most promising way forward will spring from creative, concerted, and collaborative efforts in regions across the country, where residents and other system stakeholders dare to find and fulfill their shared aspirations.

We live in a world relentlessly pushed forward by the velocity, volatility, uncertainty, disruption, and disequilibrium of constant change.  As the pace of change accelerates, so does the shelf-life of our strategies, processes, frameworks, and systems.  The rapidity of change now requires an expanding and continuously evolving breadth and depth to our repertoire of problem-solving strategies and leadership skill-sets.  Yet, even in the face of this rapidity of change and the disequilibrium it creates, too often, we find ourselves as individuals and organizations siloed in and dedicated to only one way of doing and working.  

SFI's Cities, Scaling, and Sustainability research effort is creating an interdisciplinary approach and quantitative synthesis of organizational and dynamical aspects of human social organizations, with an emphasis on cities. Different disciplinary perspectives are being integrated in terms of the search for similar dependences of urban indicators on population size - scaling analysis - and other variables that characterize the system as a whole. A particularly important focus of this research area is to develop theoretical insights about cities that can inform quantitative analyses of their long-term sustainability in terms of the interplay between innovation, resource appropriation, and consumption and the make up of their social and economic activity. This focus area brings together urban planners, economists, sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, and complex system theorists with the aim of generating an integrated and quantitative understanding of cities. Outstanding areas of research include the identification of general scaling patterns in urban infrastructure and dynamics around the world, the quantification of resource distribution networks in cities and their interplay with the city's socioeconomic fabric, issues of temporal acceleration and spatial density, and the long-term dynamics of urban systems.

It is vital that we understand the physical nature of wealth so we can envision and build economic systems that are capable of (1) reducing chronic inequality in the world; (2) recognizing the inherent value of nature as a foundational building block for any economic system; and (3) exploring the 'design space' of all possible economic systems to find those best suited for planetary sustainability.