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3 The Potential of Operational Systems Engineering
3 The Potential of Operational Systems Engineering
Pages 23-34
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From page 23... ...
As a starting point for identifying potential applications to peacebuilding, he discussed a computational model of health care delivery that has been used to conduct experiments supporting decision making in health delivery. Robert Ricigliano, director of the Institute of World Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, demonstrated a relational model of social processes in South Sudan that has been used to identify leverage points where investment or innovation could have high impact.
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From page 24... ...
Using Table 3-1, Rouse described the issues that can be understood at each layer in such a model and gave examples of systems modeling approaches or tools that could be used to analyze these issues. For example, techniques to model the macro supply TABLE 3-1 Social Systems Can Be Conceptualized as Hierarchical Networks with Multiple Levels, Issues, and Approaches Level Issues Modeling Approaches Society GDP, Supply/Demand, Policy Macroeconomic Economic Cycles System Dynamics Intra-Firm Relations, Competition Network Models Organizations Profit Maximization Microeconomic Competition Game Theory Investment Discounted Cash Flow, Options Processes People, Material Flow Discrete-Event Models Process Efficiency Learning Models Workflow Network Models People Consumer Behavior Agent-Based Models Risk Aversion Utility Models Perception Progression Markov, Bayes Models SOURCE: Rouse workshop presentation.
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From page 25... ...
Rouse emphasized that, for a given problem, multiple models based on different modeling approaches may be an effective way to explore different aspects of the problem, as opposed to developing a single model that addresses all questions and information needs. Rouse demonstrated the power of this approach with a model evaluating the Emory University Prevention and Wellness Program to prevent diabetes and heart disease.
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The project demonstrated that investments in health and wellness for employees could produce a 7 percent ROI. However, this rate of return did not come from scaling up Emory's current prevention and wellness program, which would produce a substantial negative rate of return.
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From page 27... ...
It, too, produces insights that can be used to aim, implement, or redirect policies more effectively, rather than yielding specific predictions. Part of the Joint Irregular Warfare Analytic Baseline (JIWAB)
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From page 28... ...
Plus signs indicate increases and minus signs indicate decreases. For example, the arc joining GoSS legitimacy and capacity to unbalance economic development in R1 should be read, "Decreases in GoSS legitimacy and capacity tend to increase imbalance in economic development." SOURCE: Ricigliano workshop presentation.
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From page 29... ...
A balancing loop, on the other hand, contains negative feedback that resists change and stabilizes each variable within the loop. For example, in B6 a decline in government legitimacy encourages external donors to invest in capacity-building projects that improve government legitimacy.
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(GoSS) capacity building and foreign investment can both foster government legitimacy and exacerbate conflict between the traditional and modern elements in South Sudanese society.
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In general, when reality differs from the model predictions, modelers have an opportunity to learn why things turned out differently than expected. The slogan Ricigliano uses is "fail smart, learn, and adapt fast." But he said the peacebuilding community is not currently set up to fail smart; it tends to bury mistakes, rather than learning from them by validating or invalidating testable hypotheses to improve understanding over time based on both failure and success.
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From page 32... ...
The instability caused by foreign investments in local communities shown in Figure 3-2 is likely one such pattern of behavior. Once these patterns are recognized, learning from conflict to conflict by incorporating previous experience and knowledge becomes possible.
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From page 33... ...
On other hand, once the where has been determined, the question of how to intervene is often a fairly straightforward activity that defines goals, programming, and methods to monitor and evaluate impact. Finally, Ricigliano noted that a map is not a quantitative model.
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