Systems, Volume 2, Issue 1 (March 2014) – 4 articles , Pages 1-76

Educational programs leading to degrees in system dynamics are rare and thus of critical importance to the future of the field of system dynamics. However, to a large extent such programs have not yet been made transparent to the system dynamics community as a whole. The present article describes the design and rationale for undergraduate and graduate programs at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). The goal of the article is to invite feedback from the system dynamics community about our specific programs as well as to facilitate wider discussion about the appropriate content, design, and pedagogy of degree programs and courses in system dynamics. Full article

This paper proposes a novel approach to analyze potential accessibility to ambulance services by combining the demand-covered-ratio and potential serviceability with the ambulance-covering-ratio. A Geographic Information System (GIS)-based spatial analysis will assist ambulance service planners and designers to assess and provide rational service coverage based on simulated random incidents. The proposed analytical model is compared to the gravity-based two-step floating catchment area method. The study found that the proposed model could efficiently identify under-covered and overlapped ambulance service coverage to improve service quality, timeliness, and efficiency. The spatial accessibility and serviceability identified with geospatial random events show that the model is able to plan rational ambulance service coverage in consideration of households and travel time. The model can be applied to both regional and statewide coverage plans to aid the interpretation of those plans. Full article

The process of collective education in an organization that has the capacity to impact an organization’s operations, performance and outcomes is called organizational learning. In health care organizations, patient care is provided through one or more visible and invisible teams. These teams are composed of experts and novices from diverse backgrounds working together to provide coordinated care. The number of teams involved in providing care and the possibility of breakdowns in communication and coordinated care increases in direct proportion to sophisticated technology and treatment strategies of complex disease processes. Safe patient care is facilitated by individual professional learning; inter-professional team learning and system based organizational learning, which encompass modified context specific learning by multiple teams and team members in a health care organization. Organizational learning in health care systems is central to managing the learning requirements in complex interconnected dynamic systems where all have to know common background knowledge along with shared meta-knowledge of roles and responsibilities to execute their assigned functions, communicate and transfer the flow of pertinent information and collectively provide safe patient care. Organizational learning in health care is not a onetime intervention, but a continuing organizational phenomenon that occurs through formal and informal learning which has reciprocal association with organizational change. As such, organizational changes elicit organizational learning and organizational learning implements new knowledge and practices to create organizational changes. Full article

This paper first reviews research linked to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction focusing on “child-centred disaster risk reduction” (CC-DRR), highlighting systemic aspects of disaster prevention and preparedness educational programming to date. However, it is also pointed out that education evaluated to date largely assumes a linear, mechanistic approach to preparedness and related resiliency outcomes. Thus, the main thrust of this paper is to elucidate means by which hazards and disaster preparedness education programs for children can shift to systems-based models, those that incorporate both systemic epistemologies but also more systems-based, and interconnected, curricula. This includes curricula that help children connect the physical world and science with the social world and human factors. It also includes the more systemic idea that natural hazards are but one example of a larger category of problems in life related to risk and uncertainty. Thus, a main aim of a systems educational approach is to help children equip themselves with knowledge, skills, motivation and confidence that they can increasingly manage a range of risks in life. This includes an increasing understanding of the added value that can be gained from approaching problems with systemic tools, including producing increasingly effective and sustainable solutions to what public policy refers to as wicked problems. Full article