Publications

New book Think Crime! by Paul Cozens describes a systems-based approach to designing environments to reduce crime.The book focuses on using practical understanding of the interplay of multiple interrelated systemic factors that shape motivation and opportunities for crime.

Read more: New Book Think Crime!

An example of the use of System Dynamics in tourism planning is found in reports of research modelling the tourism and planning  of the Ningaloo region. These models include substantial contextual factors and demonstrate how system dynamics can be used in creating designs and plans  that would otherwise be viewed as wicked problems.

Read more: System Dynamics of Tourism Ningaloo

The Relating Systems and Design 2014 proceedings are from a symposium organised by the Systemic Design Research Network, published by the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and edited by Birger Sevaldson and Peter Jones.

Read more: Proceedings: Relating Systems Thinking and Design 2014 Symposium

The book Systems Concepts In Action : A Practitioner's Toolkit by Richard Hummelbrunner and Bob Williams is focused on the practical use of systems ideas. It describes 19 commonly used systems approaches, complete with case studies, variations and discussion of each approach's pros and cons. Each chapter begins with a set of questions that the particular method addresses.

Read more: Book: Systems Concepts in Action

New systems book 'Gonna Lay Down My Sword and Shield: A Complexity Perspective on Human Evolution from a Violent Past to a Compassionate Future' by Victor R. D. MacGill.  Comment by Alexander Lazlo, President ISSS 'MacGill provides an accessible entrée for the thinking and caring person wishing to make sense of an increasingly complex and apparently chaotic world.'

Read more: Book - complex systems & human evolution

New book Disciplining Interdisciplinarity: Integration and Implementation Sciences for Researching Complex Real-World Problems by Prof Gabrielle Bammer and published by ANU E-Press and is now available free online at http://epress.anu.edu.au/titles/disciplining-interdisciplinarity.

New book: Ackoff's F/laws: The Cake by Russell L. Ackoff (with Herbert J. Addison). Russ Ackoff’s witty and subversive  122 F/laws of Management are widely respected and cover areas like hierarchy, teams, innovation, motivation and management. This book brings them together in a single source.

Read more: Ackoff's 'The Cake'

New systems book by Rosalind Armson 'Growing Wings on the Way: Systems Thinking for Messy Situations'. With some problems it’s hard to know where to start – we can’t define them, we get in a muddle thinking about them, we may try to ignore some aspect/s of them and – when we finally do something – they usually get worse. Rosalind Armson is one of the world’s foremost teachers and practitioners of Systems Thinking, and her remarkable book explains how these messes happen and what to do about them.

This book is about dealing with messes. Sometimes known as 'wicked problems', messes (or messy situations) are fairly easy to spot:

• it's hard to know where to start
• we can't define them
• everything seems to connect to everything else and depends on something else having been done first
• we get in a muddle thinking about them
• we often try to ignore some aspect/s of them
• when we finally do something about them, they usually get worse
• they're so entangled that our first mistake is usually to try and fix them as we would fix a simple problem.

  Read more: Growing Wings on the Way: Systems Thinking for Messy Situations

For those interested in geo-political systems analysis, Stratfor is offering a range of information services, including their free Intelligence Reports.

Read more: Stratfor

The International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) was commissioned to produce a report on the work of John Bowlby of Stanford and the Tavistock Institute. The report is available here.