Systems, Volume 8, Issue 3 (September 2020) – 12 articles

This study estimates demographic resilience in local socioeconomic systems of Southern Europe using long-term population dynamics. We assume attractive places with a continuously expanding (resident) population as ‘demographically resilient’, and locations experiencing a persistent decline of population as more fragile to external shocks. Based on these premises, a comprehensive assessment of demographic resilience in more than 1000 municipalities along the urban–rural gradient in Greece, a Mediterranean country with marked regional disparities, was carried out between 1961 and 2011. Municipalities were considered representative of homogeneous local communities, especially in rural areas. The results of non-parametric correlations suggest how basic geographical gradients (coastal–inland and urban–rural) have significantly influenced the demographic resilience of Greek municipalities. These findings outline two contrasting spatial patterns that reflect (i) continuous expansion of peri-urban local communities and (ii) a particularly intense rural shrinkage, linking depopulation to land abandonment and scarce accessibility of inland districts. While long-term population growth in Greece has progressively re-shaped the intrinsic divide in urban and rural areas, the traditional gap in central and peripheral districts is still reflected in the spatial polarization between the ‘demographically resilient’, socially dynamic coastal locations and the ‘demographically fragile’ inland, economically marginal places. These results indicate the persistence of a center–periphery model characterizing long-term settlement expansion in Greece, with spatial patterns delineating ‘resilient’ and ‘fragile’ districts based essentially on infrastructures, accessibility, and amenities. Full article

Inelasticity of demand along with the distributed energy sources and energy market democratization pose significant challenges which have considerable negative impacts on overall grid balance. The need for increased capacity and flexibility in the era of energy market digitalization has introduced new requirements in the energy supply network which could not be satisfied without continuous and costly local power network upgrades. Additionally, with the emergence of Smart Homes (SHs) and Home Energy Management (HEM) systems for monitoring and operating household appliances, opportunities have arisen for automated Demand Response (DR). DR is exploited for the modification of the consumer energy demand, in response to the specific conditions within the electricity system (e.g., peak period network congestion). In order to optimally integrate DR in the broader Smart Grid (SG) system, modelling of the system parameters and safety analysis is required. In this paper, the implementation of STPA (System-Theoretic Process Analysis) structured method, as a relatively new hazard analysis technique for complex systems is presented and the feasibility of STPA implementation for loss prevention on a Demand Response system for home energy management, and within the complex SG context, is examined. The applied method delivers a mechanism useful in understanding where gaps in current operational risk structures may exist. The STPA findings in terms of loss scenarios can be used to generate a variety of safeguards to ensure secure operational control and in implementing targeted strategies through standard approaches of risk assessment. Full article

Human interactions are paramount to the user experience, satisfaction, and risk of user errors. For products, anthropometry has traditionally been used in product sizing. However, structured methods that accurately map static and dynamic capabilities (e.g., functional mapping) of musculoskeletal regions for the conceptualization and redesign of product applications and use cases are limited. The present work aims to introduce and validate the effectiveness of the Interaction Variability method, which maps product components and musculoskeletal regions to determine explicit design parameters through limiting designer variation in the classification of human interaction factors. This study enrolled 16 engineering students to evaluate two series of interactions for (1) water bottle and (2) sunglasses applications enabling method validity and designer consistency assessments. For each interaction series, subjects identified and characterized product applications, components, and human interaction factors. Primary interactions, product mapping, and application identification achieved consensus between ranges of 31.25% and 100.00%, with significance (p < 0.1) observed at consensus rates of ≥75.00%. Significant levels of consistency were observed amongst designers, for at least one measure in all phases except anthropometric mapping for the sunglasses application indicating method effectiveness. Interaction variability was introduced and validated in this work as a standardized approach to identify, define, and map human and product interactions, which may reduce unintended use cases and user errors, respectively, in consumer populations. Full article

This paper reflects on a seminal work in the history of AI and representation: Rodney Brooks’ 1991 paper Intelligence without representation. Brooks advocated the removal of explicit representations and engineered environments from the domain of his robotic intelligence experimentation, in favour of an evolutionary-inspired approach using layers of reactive behaviour that operated independently of each other. Brooks criticised the current progress in AI research and believed that removing complex representation from AI would help address problematic areas in modelling the mind. His belief was that we should develop artificial intelligence by being guided by the evolutionary development of our own intelligence and that his approach mirrored how our own intelligence functions. Thus, the field of behaviour-based robotics emerged. This paper offers a historical analysis of Brooks’ behaviour-based robotics approach and its impact on artificial intelligence and cognitive theory at the time, as well as on modern-day approaches to AI. Full article

Modeling human decision-making is difficult. Decision-makers are typically primed with unique biases that widen the confidence interval of judgment. Therefore, it is important that the human process in the system being modeled is designed to alleviate damaging biases and assumptions in an effort to increase process consistency between decision-makers. In this experiment, it is hypothesized that coupling specific decision-facilitation methods with a specific scale range will affect the consistency between decision-makers. This article presents a multiphase experiment that examines a varying presentation mode as well as scale range to determine how value is determined in subsequent pairwise comparisons of alternatives against specific requirements. When considering subject value ratings of the expected rank order of alternative subgroups (indicating strong criteria independence), results show that subjects used consistent comparison ratios regardless of the scale range. Furthermore, when comparing the subgroups of expected rank order responses to the subgroups of biased responses, although ratios were different, the same general trend of comparison existed within subgroups. Providing evidence that careful selection of the presentation mode can facilitate more consistent value comparisons between compatible decision-makers allows for the identification of and adjustment of disparities due to bias and potential lack of incremental scaling detail. Furthermore, by creating decision processes that render more consistent cognitive behavior between decision-makers, tighter confidence intervals can be obtained, and critical assumptions can be validated. Full article

Energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and comfort in public buildings has received increasing attention in recent years as it can contribute to maintaining safety conditions and to the reduction of conventional fuels consumption, energy costs for building owners, and greenhouse gas emissions. People are an integral part of any building energetic ecosystem as, according to some estimates, they spend a great part of their life in indoor spaces. On one side, occupants are responsible for the energy consumption of the building and for this reason the “psychology of energy saving” has received attention since the 70s up to recent results. On the other hand, strategies for energy efficiency should not jeopardize occupants’ health and quality of life. While general awareness of the value of environmental variables has increased in the last few years, this interest has recently been further exacerbated by the spreading of the well-known COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, as most countries have started planning post-lock-down activities, there is a growing concern regarding how social distancing measures can be enforced in shared buildings and strict indoor air quality control can prevent airborne virus transmission in crowded spaces. The paper discusses the perspectives of increasing the level of social interaction of building users through the systematic use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and in particular, some specific platforms. The ICT system, taking information from the occupants in a concerted way, can be an important instrument to collect data, coming both from physical sensors and from people to develop a multi-objective control strategy for the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Cooling (HVAC) systems in order to obtain energy savings whilst balancing user comfort and healthy conditions. Full article

Open-source software (OSS) is a key aspect of software creation. However, little is known about programmers’ decisions to trust software from OSS websites. The current study emulated OSS websites and manipulated reputation and performance factors in the stimuli according to the heuristic-systematic processing model. We sampled professional programmers—with a minimum experience of three years—from Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 38). We used a 3 × 3 within-subjects design to investigate the relationship between OSS reputation and performance on users’ time spent on code, the number of interface clicks, trustworthiness perceptions, and willingness to use OSS code. We found that participants spent more time on and clicked the interface more often for code that was high in reputation. Meta-information included with OSS tools was found to affect the degree to which computer programmers interact with and perceive online code repositories. Furthermore, participants reported higher levels of perceived trustworthiness in and trust toward highly reputable OSS code. Notably, we observed fewer significant main effects for the performance manipulation, which may correspond to participants considering performance attributes mainly within the context of reputation-relevant information. That is, the degree to which programmers investigate and then trust OSS code may depend on the initial reputation ratings. Full article

There are inherent difficulties in designing an effective Human–Machine Interface (HMI) for a first-of-its-kind system. Many leading cognitive research methods rely upon experts with prior experiences using the system and/or some type of existing mockups or working prototype of the HMI, and neither of these resources are available for such a new system. Further, these methods are time consuming and incompatible with more rapid and iterative systems development models (e.g., Agile/Scrum). To address these challenges, we developed a Wargame-Augmented Knowledge Elicitation (WAKE) method to identify information requirements and underlying assumptions in operator decision making concurrently with operational concepts. The developed WAKE method incorporates naturalistic observations of operator decision making in a wargaming scenario with freeze-probe queries and structured analytic techniques to identify and prioritize information requirements for a novel HMI. An overview of the method, required apparatus, and associated analytical techniques is provided. Outcomes, lessons learned, and topics for future research resulting from two different applications of the WAKE method are also discussed. Full article

Systems engineering practices in the maritime industry and the Navy consider operational availability as a system attribute determined by system components and a maintenance concept. A better understanding of the risk attitudes of system operators and maintainers may be useful in understanding potential impacts the system operators and maintainers have on operational availability. This article contributes to the literature a method that synthesizes the concepts of system reliability, and operator and maintainer risk attitudes to provide insight into the effect that risk attitudes of systems operators and maintainers have on system operational availability. The method consists of four steps providing the engineer with a risk-attitude-adjusted insight into the system’s potential operational availability. Systems engineers may use the method to iterate a system’s design or maintenance concept to improve expected operational availability. If it is deemed necessary to redesign a system, systems engineers will likely choose new system components and/or alter their configuration; however, redesign is not limited to physical alteration of the system. Several other options may be more practical depending the system’s stage in the life cycle to address low risk-adjusted operational availability such as changes to maintenance programs and system supportability rather than on component and system reliability. A simple representative example implementation is provided to demonstrate the method and discussion of the potential implications for Navy ship availability are discussed. Potential future work is also discussed. Full article

We discuss an approach to using the event study, a common experimental design in the social sciences, to parameterize delays and develop other insights into system structure. We show a step-by-step process for undertaking a delay event study, discuss some of the conceptual reasons that this provides information about the delay, and illustrate the process for a typical example. We find evidence that school funding changes following court orders do not adjust quickly, and likely follow a higher-order, as opposed to a first-order, delay process. Our tests also suggest that school district budget makers appear to forecast revenue pessimistically, contributing an additional source of delay to the system. Full article

The current pandemic is a great challenge for several research areas. In addition to virology research, mathematical models and simulations can be a valuable contribution to the understanding of the dynamics of the pandemic and can give recommendations to physicians and politicians. Based on actual data of people infected with COVID-19 from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), input parameters of mathematical models will be determined and applied. These parameters will be estimated for the UK, Italy, Spain, and Germany and used in an $SIR$ -type model. As a basis for the model’s calibration, the initial exponential growth phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in the named countries is used. Strategies for the commencing and ending of social and economic shutdown measures are discussed. Full article

Systems thinking (ST) is an interdisciplinary domain that offers different ways to better understand the behavior and structure of a complex system. Over the past decades, several publications can be identified in academic literature, focusing on different aspects of systems thinking. However, two critical questions are not properly addressed in the extant body of ST literature: (i) How to conduct the content analysis exclusively to derive the prominent statistics (i.e., influential journals, authors, affiliated organizations and countries) pertaining to the domain of ST? (ii) How to get better insights regarding the current and emerging trends that may evolve over time based on the existing body of ST literature? To address these gaps, the aim of this research study is to provide a comprehensive insight into the domain of systems thinking through bibliometric and network analysis. Beginning with over 6000 accumulated publications, the analysis narrowed down to 626 prominent articles with proven influence published over the past three decades. Leveraging rigorous bibliometric tools analysis, this research unveils the influential authors, leading journals and top contributing organizations and countries germane to the domain of systems thinking. In addition, citation, co-citation and page rank analysis used to rank top influential articles in the area of systems thinking. Finally, with the aid of the network analysis, key clusters in the existing literature are identified based on the research areas of systems thinking. The findings of this research will serve as a bluebook for practitioners and scholars to conduct future research within systems thinking context. Full article