#ISSS2017 Vienna

Positive Systems Science (PSS) explicitly brings together the strength-based lens of positive psychology with the complex, holistic lens of systems science, with the ultimate goal of bringing about desired change that supports the wellbeing of human social systems. This presentation opens an interdisciplinary conversation about how positivity, complexity, and temporality come together.
The field of positive psychology focuses on positivity, including understanding and building happiness, the “good life”, and optimal functioning in individuals, organizations, and broader communities. Among the psychological sciences, it is one of the most applied areas, successfully connecting with researchers, professionals, policy makers, and the general public.
Systems science incorporates complexity, considering aspects such as feedback, unintended consequences, dynamic associations, and changes that occur within any given system. It has developed a range of tools that can be used to understand and address the complexity of human life.
Underlying practice and research in both of these fields is temporality – how factors and events unfold, interplay, and change over time.
Systems science and positive psychology both have strengths and weaknesses, and we suggest that the synthesis of the two perspectives will create frameworks, tools, and applications that are greater than either perspective alone. Such an approach does not simply identify and address existing problems, but generates pathways toward yet unimagined futures.
We will show how existing areas of research and practice reflect aspects of PSS, including youth development, organizational scholarship, public health, and social ecology. These examples illustrate the PSS framework and begin to link relevant areas of scholarship and practice.

In 2016, a team of scholars met in a gathering sponsored by the International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR), to discuss how systems research could support the increase of systems literacy worldwide. Members of this team developed a conceptual model of the role of systems research in developing such literacy. One consideration this model identified was that people engage with the “systems world” from the vantage point of numerous roles: systems scientist, systems researcher, system engineer, systems philosopher, etc.. Each of these roles demands particular competencies with respect to systems theory and practice. Future research must be done to identify the competencies particular to each role. Alongside such research, there is a need to identify a maturity profile for each role – how we can assess the degree to which a person is effectively executing the competencies required to do good systems work.
Maturity models are utilized in several industries, in the attempts to cultivate and evaluate people’s ability to effectively execute complex tasks . This paper will examine current thought about the value and pitfalls of maturity models. To further the IFSR ‘s work of promoting world class systems research, it will identify principles and exemplars that can guide the development of maturity models for the varied roles people take in the systems world.

Assessing sustainability of systems requires integration of various approaches, methods, and disciplines. Although Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been a widely accepted method to assess environmental sustainability of products, processes, and goods, it has some limitations such as isolated way of assessing the environmental impacts with no consideration of social and economic impacts. In this regard, LCA method has been transforming into a new framework known as life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA), which proposes improvement in three dimensions: (1) inclusion of social and economic indicators in addition to the environmental impacts, (2) broadening the scope of analysis from product-level impacts to quantification of macro-level economy-wide impacts, (3) deepening the assessment mechanisms to capture and understand the interrelations, feedback mechanisms, rebound effects, scenario-analysis, stakeholder involvement, and uncertainties. In this study, challenges related to these dimensions, applications from recent literature, and future perspectives are discussed along with a case study and a comprehensive literature review. According to the literature review, there is a lack of collaboration among the environmental, social, and economic disciplines. Among the applications of LCSA studies, only few (3 out of 56) studies were able to quantify sustainability impacts at global scale, meaning encompassing complex supply chains at global level. Furthermore, rebound and feedback effects of the system-of-interest were not studied sufficiently. In terms of methods applied in the field of LCSA, there were a high degree of diversity among the tools, methods, and approaches. In this regard, there is a strong need for developing a common system language and bringing tools, disciplines, and methods to overcome challenges associated with assessing sustainability. As a case study, life cycle sustainability assessment of alternative vehicle technologies, in the U.S. is conducted using a system dynamics model in which economic, social, and the environmental impacts of various alternative vehicle types are quantified until 2050. The proposed model captured complex dynamic relationships between economy, society, the environment, and the U.S. transportation. Alternative vehicle options include including battery electric vehicles (BEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and internal combustion vehicles (ICVs). Extreme customer choice scenarios are tested for each vehicle type to compare their maximum potential impacts. BEVs are found to be a better alternative for most of sustainability impact categories in long run, while they are economically not preferable until mid-2020s. Analysis results revealed that any alternative vehicle option, alone, cannot reduce the rapidly increasing atmospheric temperature and the negative impacts of the global climate change, even though the entire fleet is replaced with the most environmental friendly vehicle option. In addition, the impacts from feedbacks within the society, economy, and the environment are found to be smaller compared to exogenous drivers such as existing and expected trends in population, economy, and global warming. This study exemplifies the advancements in life cycle assessment methods and aims to strengthen the transformation of the current sustainability assessment methods by considering all of the inherent mutual and dynamic relationships in the environmental, social, and economic aspects.

This paper commences with a theoretical underpinning of the nature of violence from a systems perspective, exploring the interactions between parts and wholes where boundaries are transgressed or vital flows are disrupted. A case study of Rangi, a perpetrator of family violence, who is a composite of people the author has worked with over the years, is then used to demonstrate how systems principles can be used to understand the nature of human violence on an individual level and to inform ways of working with clients aiming to reduce the frequency and severity of violence in their lives and the people around them. The focus then shifts to structural violence imposed on the parts of the system by the whole. First, this is examined at a societal level, then returning to the case study of Rangi, there is an exploration of structural violence within the criminal justice system revealing paradoxes to be confronted in working with violent clients.

Positive psychology provides a platform for bringing systems science to life. The field has rapidly captured the attention of researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and the general public. We suggest that positive psychology can add value to systems science by making tools and theories more useable, practical, and engaging.

Positive psychology examines what makes a good life. The field has developed numerous interventions and strategies to help people thrive. However, there is a tendency to focus on individuals, ignoring the complex context in which the person resides. Systems science has much to offer to research and practice in positive psychology, and yet the terms and concepts can be inaccessible.

The creativity of positive psychologists can help make systems tools and theories more approachable. For example, the Pixar movie “Inside Out” illustrates multiple perspectives within and between each character (personified as joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust characters within each person’s head), inter-relationships of the system (e.g., actions by the emotions impact how Riley behaves, and experiences impact the structure within Riley’s brain), and unintended consequences of a given action. This workshop will illustrate how movies and other mediums can strip away jargon and illustrate key systems principles in a more accessible manner.

Heuristic methods have provided, to differing degrees of success, the means to design and manage the human activity systems that support the realization of engineered systems. However, as the complexity of engineering systems has increased, the effectiveness of the heuristic methods to design and manage the realization of the system has decreased. Furthermore, the constrains that heuristic methods inherently possess limit their evolution and the ability of systems and engineering managers to understand how emergence in human activity systems rises and how can it be managed. Von Bertalanffy argued that deriving a theory of universal principles applying to systems in general is imperative. Considering that human activity systems are notional systems, which express purposeful human activities and can be used to study possible changes in complex real-world situations, then a team is defined as the elemental form of a human activity system. In this case, a team is an emergent result of individuals joining into human activity systems. In this research, the authors propose to study teams using systems principles Rousseau proposed. Gaining understanding of the principles that drive the emergence of the capabilities of teams and human activity systems will assist systems and engineering managers efficiently design and manage complex human activity systems.

This article explores how systems dynamics combined with employee empowerment can be used to reduce timeframes on key stages in court proceedings. This analysis is done from the empirical perspective of a Justice of Peace Court in Argentina, where the researcher and the team of The Lobos City Justice of Peace Court, the practitioners, worked together towards a common goal using action research as methodology. The implementation took place between February 2014 and May 2017 and the key research objectives were to explore on how collective transformation, as a motor for time reduction, can be enhanced through four forms of engagement: creation of awareness, self-implementation of innovative methodologies, understanding systems dynamics and building “Team Pride” as a core value. The article is structured as follows.

Initially, it is presented the background story of the project in Lobos City Justice of the Peace Court, then, by combining insights from the case and previous literature, the author unpacks the four forms of engagement. The stages of implementation are presented including in-depth interviews and workshops, results and feedback loop. To test the hypothesis, the author performed a non-parametric Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon test, comparing two data sets (previous and during the implementation timeframes). Finally, a set of conclusions are discussed and presented together with potential areas for further considerations like challenges of implementation in courts with higher amount of cases.

Grand plans can be seductive. A grand political plan to save the country. A grand scientific plan to save the planet. A grand plan to lose that last fifteen pounds. But I don’t believe in grand plans. I believe only in try and fail and try again. Inspect and adapt. Try something, mess it up and fix it. Venture outside your comfort zone and learn something.

In this talk, Daryl will look at how certain trends in software development, known as “iterative and incremental” might help with academic work in systems thinking. Several prominent systems thinkers have lamented how hard it is to teach systems thinking models. Why is that? Is it because the students are not prepared? Or because we are teaching the wrong way? Join Daryl for an interactive dialogue on this topic.

ABSTRACT: Positive education is a relatively new area which applies the science of positive psychology to education. It emphasizes well-being and academic achievement as complementary goals of education. Yet the educational context is complex and dynamic, and simplistic psychological interventions can be ineffective at best and harmful at worst when this complexity and the underlying structures of the system are ignored.
Systems science provides theories and tools that adequately recognize the complexity of educational systems. Yet although the field acknowledges that mindsets are a key lever for change, it lacks strategies to successfully shift those mindsets, many of which are formed and solidified through the adolescent years.
This presentation will illustrate how language provides one avenue for bridging the systems perspective with the science of positive psychology to positively impact mindsets at both individual and collective levels within educational settings. Language enables social interactions and provides a sense of meaning and connection amongst people. How a person speaks says a lot about who they are, where they are from, and the experiences they have had. Slight word changes can significantly change the meaning of a sentence or the tone of a conversation.
Notably, simple shifts in language play an important role in shifting an individual’s mindset from resistance to possibility, and in shifting a school’s culture from welfare to well-being. Drawing on several case studies, we illustrate how the strategic use of a common, positive language offers a strategic approach for shifting individual and collective mindsets in a sustainable, positive manner.

Reports on the progress of sustainability research have increased significantly during the past decades. The developmental milestones of sustainability are consistent with the post-normal versus traditional science, where trans-disciplinary and policy/action research are among the important criteria to be added to traditional analysis approach. This requires a new perspective to look at the problem at hand: we are no longer considering a group of users with common and self-interested goals when defining the scope of sustainability studies. This in turn requires sustainability indicators that can capture largely diverse but relevant measurements to completely represent the different perspectives that must be fulfilled, and methodologies that focus on heuristics, systemic stability, control, and feedback, versus traditional optimization for mechanistic problems. The present study attempts to build upon current established connection between sustainability and viability, specifically how the Viable System Model offers a framework for organizational systems to consistently perform self-adapting mechanisms to cope with internal and external sustainability challenges, and how these capabilities can help organizations achieve their sustainability development goals. A sustainability assessment model that integrates both the sustainability indicators approach and Viable System Model has also been developed and presented here.

This article explores how systems dynamics combined with employee empowerment can be used to reduce timeframes on key stages in court proceedings. This analysis is done from the empirical perspective of a Justice of Peace Court in Argentina, where the researcher and the team of The Lobos City Justice of Peace Court, the practitioners, worked together towards a common goal using action research as methodology. The implementation took place between February 2014 and May 2017 and the key research objectives were to explore on how collective transformation, as a motor for time reduction, can be enhanced through four forms of engagement: creation of awareness, self-implementation of innovative methodologies, understanding systems dynamics and building “Team Pride” as a core value. The article is structured as follows.

In the intelligent web era, the measure of intelligence can no longer depends on the linear model. The various multidimensional measurements, such as integer dimension, topological dimension, fractional dimension, negative dimension, etc., shoud be taken into serious account. Based on these multidimensional measurement, we could further apply grand multidimensional design–a meta-ontology (or upper, fundamental ontology) to integrate human wisdom and compassion into machine knowledge. The ∞2 model represented as a multidimensional intelligences theory with meta-ontology could help realize the grand multidimensional design. In this paper, the author will first pinpoint the advent of multidimensional super-intelligent era which might come much sooner than we could imagine. With deeper understanding of the core concept of the super-intelligent era, the author will then highlight the significance of human adaptability to multidimensional thinking. Secondly, the author will compare 20 contemporary available meta-ontology or upper ontologies, and trace their deficiency in responding to the creative design of the grand multidimensional measurements. Thirdly, towards a dynamic semantic web, the author will apply a dynamic multidimensional matrix to describe the ∞2 model of multidimensional intelligences theory. The dynamic multidimensional matrix is based on the multidimensional nonlinear language, which has been shown in the TV series Earth Final Conflict (1997) and in the film Arrival (2016). It might provide great possibilities to resolve the constraints imposed by small display media and linear language. By further research and applications, it is expected that machine knowledge and human wisdom and compassion could be more delicately integrated by synthesizing the most general 42 elements in the ∞2 model of multidimensional intelligences theory. The author contends that the ∞2 model of multidimensional intelligences theory will promote the integration of human-machine smart era, accelerate multi-level jump of the multidimensional intelligences, and nurture the new universe of ubiquitous web of things and beings.

The Mexican State, educational institutions and research centers have made efforts to found organisms, programs and projects, in order to promote spatial technological development, which appear and disappear without reaching the objective for which they were founded.
In order to achieve technological development, it is necessary to integrate government-academia-industry, and it is the Mexican Space Agency, an agency of the Mexican State which is responsible for carrying out this activity; Nevertheless the Agency establishes what must be done to reach the technological development but does not mentioned how to achieve it. For this reason, designing a systemic model was proposed which allows the integration of scientific research in companies based on market goals, objectives and strategies.
The systemic model has three stages within which are five phases and within them are eight subphases: The three stages are: input (I); Box (B); Output (O); O = IB, that is, I and B can be adjusted to achieve O. Holding fixed I and O. B will have infinite solutions. Ideally B = O / I = 1 in practice will be less than 1. Therefore the systemic model for the development of the Mexican special system has infinite solutions.
It is proposed that spatial technological development begins with the construction of a spatial launch base as ground conditions exist for space launches and would attract different companies such as satellite constructors, space launchers, fuel producers, tourism services, etc.

Academic psychology focuses mainly on research regarding rational consciousness, while other forms of consciousness are first and foremost marginalized as ‘altered states of consciousness’. The indication of ‘altered states of consciousness’ consistently reproduces: firstly the positing of rational consciousness as a primal given; secondly the fixation on a (consciousness)process as a state; thirdly the mistake, to characterize something as ‘altered’ which is defined by constant alteration; fourthly a dichotomization of ‘normal’ and ‘altered’, which conceals the ongoing reproduction of rational consciousness; and fifthly the suggestion that non-rational consciousness is epistemically inferior, illegitimate and deviant. This paper aims to make a contribution to solving those problems, by focusing central aspects of autopoietic systems theory and the fundamental term liminality, which are then combined to a new theory of non-rational consciousness. In this paper the term ‘liminal consciousness’ is used, which refers to forms of a psychic system that are less focused on points of reference, rather they converge to the limit of (temporary) omission of its autopoiesis. This concept is not thought of as a dichotomous category, but rather as a continuously increasing omission of the reproduction of self-referential structures. Three basic possibilities are identified, which can lead to liminal consciousness: a focus on self-reference, a focus on external-reference, or a short-circuit of concentration by focusing on the occurrence of thoughts. Within this framework many forms of consciousness, e.g. those ‘invited’ by ecstatic or meditative practice, can be conceptualized, without relying on religious, reductionist or mystic terms. This paper recommends the use of the term ‘liminal consciousness’ over ‘altered states of consciousness’, to improve the connectivity of communication within the scientific system.

Humans are political animals but need to be better ones, because like all other animals, indeed all life forms, they are connected, through their various social systems of all types and at all levels, more closely than ever before with a planet’s subsystems increasingly interlocking in a global system. Their role as political animals is crucial because politics remains the authoritative distribution of values. In a global society lacking an equivalent world government, humans are everywhere performing political activities on different levels, from households to villages, from cities to provinces, from states to suprastate entities, from individual economic transactions to membership in organizations interacting with other organizations, that, in the context of globalization, cannot help affecting the lives of others around the world. Because all political decisions matter, it is necessary in constructing a global society as a system for humans to cultivate their political citizenships, and for others to help them understand what the needs of a sustainable future for the earth require them to take into consideration in their political choices from the perspective of system theory.

Researchers and practitioners continue to study the causes of high-consequence events such as terrorist attacks or catastrophic failures of complex socio-technical systems. These studies have relevance to postulated and real events and are important, but limited. Analyses focusing on linear causal pathways are common in vulnerability and probabilistic risk analyses. These linear pathways typically focus on individual human error or technical system malfunctions. The linear approach is limited in its value as broader systemic issues can remain hidden.

A new model is proposed using an integral approach that describes vulnerability from a systemic wholeness perspective. Wholeness is a concept that has many meanings, from various academic and practical perspectives. This paper offers a new definition of the wholeness concept that draws from earlier ideas but is distinct in its application. The model can be used to focus attention on many integrated systemic domains simultaneously in a continuous and ongoing process. The model's foundation is a four-quadrant framework that describes subjective, objective, inter-objective, and inter-subjective domain spaces. Vulnerabilities or systemic deficiencies within these spaces are described using the metaphors of system holes and shadow aspects. Collection and depiction of these deficiencies allow for analysis, revealing common patterns of concern. Clarifying inter-organizational relationships is also important and highlights the need for clear systemic and sub-systemic boundary definitions.

Improvement of industrial, community, or infrastructure security requires a perpetual process that is described by a dynamic dimension to the wholeness model, drawing from methods employed in participatory action research. This paper presents the main points of the wholeness model, shows how deficiencies are analyzed, and provides examples of characteristic patterns of concern.

Communications are the most important part of our daily life. The ionosphere play an important role in communications due to the conditions of the ionosphere can affect severely the transmitting and receiving information. Therefore, we propose an intelligent system that can predict accurately structures in the ionosphere. We use a morphological associative model. The obtained results of effectiveness from the Leave One out, Hold Out and Ten-Fold Cross validation test were: 89.45%, 97.77% and 95.83%, respectively, when we use only the max memory because min memory showed a bad performance.

I will highlight the concepts of conatus and dynamics in Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant. These philosophers’ ideas are sometimes referred to as precursors of modern systems theories, or cybernetics.

First, I will analyse the idea of conatus in Hobbes’s theory, comparing it with those of Descartes and Spinoza. For Hobbes, conatus is motion through the length of a point and a small beginning, which causes interaction between matter. All natural and social systems then begin to move automatically. Conatus is thus just a trigger of motion.

After I discuss the transition from the notion of conatus to that of dynamics in Leibniz’s thought, I will illuminate Kant’s in both his pre-Critical and mature philosophical works. His idea is that the soul has a dynamical relation with the body, making it the prime power to move the body. Kant then examines the phenomena of the world from this viewpoint of dynamical interrelation. Thus, it lies behind the systems of recognition, which is formed simultaneously with the natural and social systems, according to Kant’s philosophy.

The interaction between elements in systems is essential to modern complex systems theory. I would like to say that these philosophers, especially Hobbes and Kant, are pioneers of complex systems theory.

In setting the aspirational vision for University for Business and Technology, founder Dr. Edmond Harjrizi sought to educate Kosovo students to become active contributors to the society and at the workplace, within the country, the Baltic region, and beyond. For historical reasons, success initially depended on inviting lecturers and scholars from abroad, as reflected in the university’s brand statement, ‘American European Education’. Now, after more than a decade of successfully educating Kosovo graduates and developing Kosovo instructors, the University plans to further awareness and promote usage of university produced knowledge, within the institution and throughout the country, in a Knowledge Center.
This UBT Knowledge Center initiative extends the founding vision of national development through higher education. Reflective of its institutional maturity, the University now produces considerable local knowledge, including but not limited to faculty publications and presentations, student paper and reports, and commissioned studies and reports. In the first stage of this initiative to enhance visibility and accessibility of local knowledge, computer science students developed the code for a repository of UBT faculty publication and presentation references, which now serves as the platform for the Kosovo national faculty bibliography.
In this second phase of making local knowledge visible, the University will create a repository system and associated workflows for acquisition, organization, and dissemination of student research projects, faculty research papers, and community research reports. This initiative acknowledges a university’s responsibility to foster democratic civil society and regional economic growth, as well as further smart business practices and higher education efficiencies. Since local knowledge, identity, and learning are necessarily situated, Kosovo students, faculty, staff, and administrators serve as domain experts and international educators from Sweden and the United States serve as design facilitators.
After two years of planning activities, initiation of human-centered design for the UBT Knowledge Center commenced in April 2017 in a graduate level Information Systems Analysis, Design, and Modeling course at the Pristina campus. Soft systems design tools guided exploration of essential questions related to the why, what, and how of this national innovation generator. Since this initiative acknowledges the social context of learning – that knowledge is acquired and understood through action, interaction, and sharing with others, soft systems models and processes explored social relationships necessary for information exchange and knowledge creation enabled by technology.

In this paper, a pedagogical model is presented for initiating student learning about systems thinking ideas and tools, such as the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) Rich Picture and PQR technique. Student projects illustrate application of these tools to advance local knowledge visibility within prototype UBT Knowledge Center environments. Course evaluations reveal students’ success in advancing knowledge ecosystem design through soft systems. One student expressed this as now “my life will have two eras, before SSM and after SSM”.

Concluding reflections explore implications for the University’s knowledge vision, including consideration of interrelationships between university and society which develop new and more complex ways for working with people, information, and technology. This necessarily includes educating graduates to curate, interpret, and use information to create knowledge, which preserves intellectual, cultural, national, and regional resources for future generations.

This study applies the systems approach to the study of protracted conflicts (PCs). The goals of this study are to demonstrate the usefulness of a systemic view-point and to reveal differences in the interactions among state actors, and between state actors and Non-State Actors (NSAs). In other words, this study intends to investigate whether PCs involving NSAs have a different dynamic than those involving state actors alone. The importance of such an inquiry is that identifying differences in interaction patterns between the two kinds of PCs should assist decision-makers in forming suitable policies and in increasing control over events in world politics. For instance, if we could tell that NSAs are more prone than states to attack as a response to a demonstration of power, we would know that we must manage situations with NSAs differently than with states.

In order to broaden the field of PC research, this study sets forth a new conceptual framework that combines knowledge from various disciplines, including international relations, mathematics, physics and engineering. Contemporary research on PCs is largely influenced by 'political realism' which considers only states as main actors that determine the political events in the world system, while leaving the influence of other actors aside. The framework offered by this study is designed to supplement existing research on PCs by broadening it to include NSAs as active participants, enabling researchers to understand the role of both types of actors in PCs dynamic. Accordingly, it offers and applies new concepts that allow for the investigation of those interactions as processes of international systems that contain both states and NSAs as actors. In doing so, it highlights the interactions between states, and between states and NSAs, as chains of interrelated actions. A mathematical analysis of those interaction chains would uncover behavioral differences between state-only PCs and PCs with NSAs. The new concepts include 'Protracted Conflict System' (PCS), 'process bifurcations', 'process stability' and 'dangerousness'.

The study establishes a new dataset containing time-series of salient events from the Israel-Arab PC between 1947-1962, as reported by The New York Times. Each time-series is dyadic and contains actions played by both sides of the dyad. A dyad is the smallest international system, containing only two actors, and therefore is the simplest to describe and analyze. The analysis of dyadic systems allows for a more nuanced investigation that may teach the investigator specific details regarding the relationship between the two actors that would not have been found in systems with more actors, mainly because of the multiplicity of actions that may cancel one another out.

In addressing the differences between state-only PCs and ones with NSAs, the study hypothesizes that they occur in the following areas: 1. Interaction patterns, 2. Causality mechanisms, 3. Process stability levels, and 4. Dangerousness levels. Results have shown that regarding interaction patterns and causal mechanisms PCs with and without NSAs do indeed behave differently. However, regarding process stability and dangerousness, both types of PCs show much resemblance. This indicates that at the basic level of causes of processes, state-only PCs and PCs with NSAs have significant differences; however, at the level of the effects, they behave similarly. Further research should address other PCs and longer spans of time in order to validate these results. Even so, these preliminary results indicate that states and NSAs behave differently in the global political arena. Therefore, it is my hope that this study will aid decision makers in determining how to respond to different types of conflict, as well as motivate the application of the systems approach in uncovering more important traits of world politics.

Complex systems range from business entities to the climate. Complex systems have tipping points at which a small perturbation can trigger a critical transition leading to an emergence at an alternate stable state. Although there are differences in the nature of complex systems, their behaviors exhibit universal characteristics as they near tipping points. Among such characteristics are common generic early warning signals that precede critical transitions. The signals include: critical slowing down in which the rate of recovery from perturbations decreases over time; an increase in the variance of the state variable; an increase in the skewness of the state variable; an increase in the autocorrelations of the state variable; flickering between different states; and characteristic spatial patterns, such as an increase in spatial correlations over time. Presence of such signals has significant management implications, as the identification of the signals prior to the tipping point could allow management to identify intervention points. Despite the applications of the generic early warning signals in various fields, such as studies on fisheries, semiconductor research, and studies on epileptic seizures, a review of literature did not identify any applications in the area of managing student program withdrawal at the undergraduate level in distance universities, hence the research gap. This area could benefit from the application of generic early warning signals because the program withdrawal rate amongst distance university students is higher than the program withdrawal rate at face-to-face conventional universities. The program withdrawal problem presents an existential crisis for distance universities especially since, in some jurisdictions, public funding is dependent on the volume of students who persist and complete their courses. The proposed generic early warning signals for critical transition are not without controversy. Some researchers have argued that the identification of variables to which the generic signals were applied can only be accomplished post hoc, and that in some of the analyzed case studies the generic early warning signals remained absent despite the critical transitions. This is referred to as false negatives. Literature also suggests that the risk of false positives exists, where the signals are identified despite the absence of a critical transition. This research assessed the generic early warning signals through an intensive case study of undergraduate program student withdrawal at a Canadian distance university. The university is non-cohort based due to its system of continuous course enrolment where students can enrol in a course at the beginning of every month. The university’s student population therefore consists largely of adult learners given its convenient system of asynchronous distance learning which allows students to pursue individualized study. The assessment of the signals was achieved through the comparison of the incidences of generic early warning signals among students who withdrew or simply became inactive in their undergraduate program of study, the true positives, to the incidences of the generic early warning signals among graduates, the false positives. Research findings showed support for the signal pertaining to the rise in flickering which is represented in the increase in the student’s non-pass rates prior to withdrawing from a program; moderate support for the signals of critical slowing down as reflected in the increase in the time a student spends in a course; and moderate support for the signals on increase in autocorrelation and increase in variance in the grade variable. The findings did not support the signal on the increase in skewness of the grade variable. The assessment of the signals suggests that the signals, with the exception with the increase of skewness, could be utilized as a predictive management tool and potentially add one more tool in addressing the student program withdrawal problem.

This paper starts with a question: is the structure of reality a hierarchy of autonomous levels emerging from the increasing complexity of matter through evolution? I will critique this deeply held conviction in the field of systems thinking, and I will argue that a different world-image is possible. Indeed, I will suggest that my alternative world-image is a more accurate depiction of the structure of the universe. My argument will be unfolded in four parts. First, I will claim that the forerunners of the idea of emergent levels can be found in the British emergentist movement of the 1920s (Alexander 1920; Morgan 1923). Second, I will argue that the idea of hierarchical levels first enterer the biological world in the early 1930s (via the work of von Bertalanffy 1928 [1933]) and was later in the 1950s extended to the rest of the cosmos (Bertalanffy 1949 [1953]; Boulding 1956). Third, that the ideas of a ‘hierarchical order’ and ‘general systemology’ could have been suggested to Bertalanffy by Hartmann’s early “theory of categories” (1923, 1926). Fourth, I will introduce Hartmann’s “theory of fundamental categories” (1940), which is devoted to the structure of reality. Finally, in contrast to these ideas, I will argue for a structure of the universe that is not constituted by an emergent hierarchy of autonomous levels at all.

The Technological Management (TM) is defined as: the decisions that the State adopts on the policies, plans programms, etc. relating to the creation, diffusion, use and transfer of space technology in order to achieve Technological Development (TD).

In Mexico the government, educational institutions and research centers have made efforts to found organisms, programms and projects, in order to foster space DT, which arise and disappear without achieving the objective for which they were founded.

The main purpose of the TM is the TD. To achieve this, integration is necessary concerning government-academia-industry in order to reduce political, economical and social conflicts.

For this reason, a Systemic Model (SM) for the Technological Development of the Mexican Space System (TDMSS) is proposed, allowing the integration of scientific research in companies based on market goals, strategies and objectives.

The MS has three stages: the first is the input (I), consisting of the analysis of the satellite system in the International and National context; The second, box (B), consisting of: diagnosis, proposal, planning to carry out the proposal;

The third relative to the output (O), in this case is the satellite TD. O = IB, ie, I and B can be adjusted to achieve O.

Human imagination through mental processes of symbol manipulation in the mind produces a range of ideas for expression of thoughts in terms of a large variety of models for representations, communications, and prediction of events and states of parts of the empirical world such as the arts, entertainments, rules and regulations for coexistence in a society, explanatory hypotheses driven by curiosity such as the sciences and so on. This kind of thinking has been going on at all levels for facilitating survival, promoting development of human intellectual endeavours and trying to aid the construction of projects on a small, every day basis to large scale i.e. engineering driven by purposive activities of humans within social and technical scenarios.
This programme of work has been going on for millennia only the details changing, mostly through paradigm changes of concepts as the means for grasping parts of the world of interest. The last major change was the Renaissance, another is taking place now.
Pre Renaissance thinking, with the possible exception of Archimedes, had been by and large speculative along lines of philosophical contemplation, mysticism, superstition, religious beliefs etc. All kinds of thoughts had been acceptable until conventional science of physics entered the scene. Although conventional science had been propounding explanatory hypotheses of more or less generality, it only accepts those, particular instances of which can be verified by models resulting in falsification, or not, of the hypothesis itself. Mathematical models having been proved most suitable for this purpose.
Conventional science has been immensely successful in producing such hypotheses for the satisfaction of curiosity, discovering new materials and products, generating teaching schemes and affecting social changes. However, its theories are symmetrical in time, thus, it could just cope when faced with irreversibility, its invariants are restricted to qualitative and quantitative properties of a single, selected object involved in highly repeatable phenomenon, it operates in many domains and as such has failed engineering as a provider of knowledge base etc. A paradigm change beckons.
The question of problem solving in technical - social scenarios emerged in an organised manner for the first time during the 2nd WW when convoys of escorted ships crossed the Atlantic and moving enemy aircraft had to be shot down giving rise to operational research and control theory. The post WW period saw rapid, further development of interest in the ‘systemic or structural view’ evolving towards divers, speculative attempts with many ill defined models and approaches which currently still prevail.
This view rejected conventional science in its entirety branded as reductionist. The view of new science of systems retains science’s methodology of problem solving and its structure of ‘general principles plus models’ but with ‘systemic or structural content’ for modelling and designing structures with multiple agents in static and dynamic states which constitutes a paradigm change and supplements current thinking.
The advantages of this approach are:
Based on the universality of the structural/systemic view.
Availability of operational models directly applicable to analysis and design of scenarios.
Accommodation of conventional science of physics in systems science resulting in a possible, unified view of the scientific enterprise.
Being part of and aiding conventional and systems engineering.
Accommodating effects of emotions, will, prejudices, ambitions etc. on activities of human beings.
Construction of novel teaching schemes to suit problem solving.
Modification of views on parts of knowledge such as chemistry.
Rooted in existing knowledge.
Adding linguistics to supplement mathematics as a symbolism for modelling.
Supplements mode of thinking by professionals and others in society.

The presentation describes the scheme of human intellectual endeavour and the ‘new science of systems’ in problem solving supplying material for sorely needed debate.

The Good Regulator Theorem proved that every effective regulator of a system must be a model of that system, and the Law of Requisite Variety dictates the range of responses that an effective regulator must be capable of. However, having an internal model and a sufficient range of responses is insufficient to ensure effective regulation, let alone ethical regulation. And whereas being effective does not require being optimal, being ethical is absolute with respect to a particular ethical schema.

This paper takes the Good Regulator Theorem, and unifies it with the Law of Requisite Variety and seven other requisites. The resulting Ethical Regulator Theorem has implications for designing and certifying explicitly ethical systems. It claims that the following nine requisites are necessary and sufficient for a cybernetic regulator to be effective and ethical:

Truth is not just about information that the regulator receives as inputs or treats as facts, but also the reliability of any interpretations of such information. If the regulator’s information sources or interpretations are unreliable, and cannot be error-corrected, then the integrity of the system is in danger. And if the perceptions of the regulator can be manipulated, it can be tricked into making decisions that are ineffective or unethical.

Variety in the range of possible actions must be as rich as the range of potential disturbances or situations. This is The Law of Requisite Variety.

Predictability requires a model that can be used to select the actions that will give the best outcome. This is the Good Regulator Theorem.

Purpose is expressed as unambiguously prioritized goals.

Ethics are expressed as unambiguously prioritized values that have a higher priority than the goals for purpose. By always obeying the relevant highest priority ethical imperatives, the regulator is guaranteed to act ethically within the scope of the ethical schema. Because ethical schemas vary between legislative jurisdictions, they are handled as plug-ins.

Intelligence must be applied to the previous five requisite types of information to select the most rational and effective ethical action from the set of possible actions.

Influence is the existence of pathways to transmit the effects of the selected actions to the regulated system. This is not a property of the regulator itself, but a function of the connectivity relationships that span from the regulator’s outputs to elements of the regulated system and its environment.

Integrity of the regulator and all its subsystems must be assured. Monitoring mechanisms must identify if an ethical imperative is violated and, if necessary, automatically notify the appropriate authorities, preserve evidence, and activate an ethical fail-safe mode.

Transparency is defined by the Law of Ethical Transparency, which states “For a system to be truly ethical, it must be possible to prove retrospectively that it acted ethically with respect to the appropriate ethical schema.”

Integrity and Transparency are codependent because we require integrity of transparency, and transparency of integrity.

Because this theorem is independent of the ethics schema that is used, it provides a basis for systematically evaluating the adequacy of existing or proposed designs for systems that make decisions that can have ethical consequences; regardless of whether the systems are human, machines, or cyberanthropic hybrids.

In addition, a new framework is proposed for classifying cybernetic systems, which highlights the existence of a possibility-space bifurcation in our future time-line, and the implementation of “super-ethical” systems is identified as an urgent moral imperative for the human race to avoid a technological dystopia. Concrete actions are proposed to steer our future towards a cyberanthropic utopia.

We reviews the necessity of ‘resilience based on disaster management’ (Chroust, G., 2015). Firstly, it examines non-resilience, showing the current status of nuclear fuel debris, contaminated water and radioactive waste after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, since when radioactive contamination has damaged the local community and socio-economic systems. Secondly, it presents evidence of global spread of super-typhoons and unusual weather patterns, with the location of maximum typhoon intensity having moved northward by approximately 150-200 km compared to 1982, and at the same time expanded due to the ‘boiling ocean’ effect. Thirdly: it considers ir-resilience, ‘global ocean warming’ through the multiplier effects of hydrospheric and CO2 atmospheric warming. Finally: it discusses un-resilience, arising from the spread of infectious tropical diseases to the northern hemisphere caused by global ocean warming, as part of the irreversible environmental change caused by our artificial systems, which will increase the risk and crisis of disasters for all human beings. Re-consideration of our living systems is therefore necessary to create awareness of the ‘five functions of resilience management’ for all-round sustainability.

Effective training is a cornerstone of disaster preparedness. Quality, consistency and frequency of training are shown to impact self-perceived disaster readiness of first responder units. However, barriers such as time, cost and safety limit the extent to which large groups of responders can be brought up to established standards, particularly related to integrated disaster team response skills and experience. This is particularly evident during events involving large-scale mobilization of population-based healthcare and public health resources where skills learned through training impact directly the actual response. Although large-scale events like the 2011 earthquake in Japan or the 2001 attacks in New York City have highlighted the need for additional emphasis on disaster response training and exercises, preparedness efforts have continued to focus primarily on three conventional training methods: 1) didactic, classroom-based teaching; 2) web-based training that consists primarily of pre-recorded, user-paced presentation material; and 3) reallife drills and tabletop exercises. While all of the above are long-established valid approaches, classroombased teaching and web-based presentations lack the realism offered by real-life drills. On the other hand, real-life drills are often inconsistent because of an inability to vary levels of stressful events and the extent of time and resources required to design, execute and review such drills. The advent of technologicallybased approaches through virtual reality (VR) environments holds significant promise in its ability to bridge the gaps of other established training formats. VR-based systems encompass a wide array of technical capabilities ranging from non-immersive computer-based setups to fully immersive and highfidelity platforms where participants wear head mounted displays (HMD) for 3D scene viewing and use 3D input devices (joystick, gamepad) for interaction in controlled environments.