On the Study of Complexity in Information Systems

Courtney, James F.; Merali, Yasmin; Paradice, David; Wynn, Eleanor

doi:10.4018/jitsa.2008010103

Cited by 18 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…These concepts include parts/wholes/sub-systems, system/boundary/environment, structure/process and emergent properties [2]. Complexity Theory is a branch of GST applicable to Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), which is a type of system that exhibits unpredictable behavior arising from non-linear spatio-temporal interaction among a large number of components and sub-systems [74]. It was developed in the 1970s in a range of disciplines including biology, chemistry, mathematics and economics.…”

Section: Application Of General Systems Thinking To the Iotmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research Challenges for the Internet of Things: What Role Can OR Play?

Ryan

Watson²

2017

Systems

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Abstract:The Internet of Things (IoT) is an extension of the Internet in which large numbers of "things", including sensors, actuators and processors, in addition to human users, are networked and able to provide high resolution data on their environment and exercise a degree of control over it. It is still at an early stage of development, and many problems/research challenges must be solved before it is widely adopted. Many of these are technical, including interoperability and scalability, as billions of heterogeneous devices will be connected, but deciding on how to invest in the IoT is a challenge for business, and there are also major social, legal and ethical challenges, including security and privacy of data collection, which must be resolved. As the future IoT will be a multi-national, multi-industry, multi-technology infrastructure, the paper reviews the global standardization efforts that are underway to facilitate its worldwide creation and adoption. The main purpose of the paper is to give a broad survey, based on published literature, of the methods of Operations Research (OR), both the mathematical tools and techniques of "hard" OR, and the various approaches of Systems Thinking, including "soft" OR, which may assist in dealing with these problems. A subset of these is described in greater depth to better convey what might be involved in applying OR and Systems Thinking to the IoT. It is suggested that OR has a role to play in balancing the technical and non-technical research challenges which confront the IoT.

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Section: Application Of General Systems Thinking To the Iotmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research Challenges for the Internet of Things: What Role Can OR Play?

Ryan

Watson²

2017

Systems

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“…Complexity and chaos theory have also been used to provide new lenses with which to view organisations and information systems within them (Courtney et al 2008). Vidal and Lacroux (1999) argue that in a complex society become decentred, away from a single decision-maker with a particular problem towards a nexus of participants/ organisations/ problems.…”

Section: Information Systems and Knowledge Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

A review of the recent contribution of systems thinking to operational research and management science

Mingers

White

2010

European Journal of Operational Research

361

229

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The systems approach, or systems thinking, has been intimately connected with the development of OR and management science initially through the work of founders such as Churchman and Ackoff and latterly through innovations such as soft systems. In this paper we have undertaken a review of the contribution that systems thinking has been making more recently, especially to the practice of OR. Systems thinking is a discipline in its own right, with many theoretical and methodological developments, but it is also applicable to almost any problem area because of its generality, and so such a review must always be selective. We have looked at the literature from both a theoretical and an applications orientation. In the first part we consider the main systems theories and methodologies in terms of their recent developments and also their applications. This covers: the systems approach, complexity theory, cybernetics, system dynamics, soft OR and PSMs, critical systems and multimethodology. In the second part we review the main domains of application: strategy, information systems, organisations, production and operations, ecology and agriculture, and medicine and health. Our overall conclusion is that while systems may not be well established institutionally, in terms of academic departments, it is incredibly healthy in terms of the quantity and variety of its applications.

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“…Agent-Based computational Modeling (ABM), a branch of computer science that emerged as a methodology for studying complex systems, namely the dynamics of systems interactions, emergent structures and patterns of behavior (Dekkers, 2009). ABM has characteristics that are particularly useful for monitoring embedded systems, since agent-based models deploy a diversity of agents to represent the constituents of the focal system (Courtney, Merali, Paradice, & Wynn, 2008;Elsenbroich & Gilbert, 2014). Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) models, inspired by the structure and functional aspects of biological neural networks, usually used to model complex relationships between system's inputs and outputs or to find data patterns (Haykin, 2008;Stergiou & Siganos, 1996).…”

Section: Modeling Complex Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%