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Book Review: Dynamic Systems for Everyone
Citation:
Berry, W. Book Review: Dynamic Systems for Everyone. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management. Allen Press, Inc., Lawrence, KS, 14(4):529, (2018).
Impact/Purpose:
This product is a book review for the journal, Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management
Description:
Asish Ghosh starts the epilogue of the second edition of Dynamic Systems for Everyone with this quote: “We are now witnessing major technological advancements in areas, like artificial intelligence, robotics and self driven cars. …The pace of change is accelerating, as the world around us is getting more complex. These changes are affecting all human societies and challenging us with new and complex technological and social problems that can only be addressed effectively by system knowledge and expertise.” He spends most the book convincing of this premise. He does a great job of building towards his major conclusion, starting with simple engineered systems, advancing through biological systems, and finally to the most complicated systems of all, our social systems. Just in case you want to try your hand at System Dynamics there are appendices on Guidelines for Drawing Causal Loop Diagrams, Generic System Behaviors, and Model building and Simulation Software. And I think you should, or at least you should give this highly readable introduction to System Dynamics a try. Ghosh works hard to convince us that there are few areas of human endeavor that cannot benefit from its [system dynamics] application. Your work probably will too, and this book can help you get there.
