Understanding systems thinking:an agenda for applied research in industry

Why systems thinking is valuable is relatively easy to explain.  However, in the authors’ work as university educators, teaching a student processes of enquiry that are themselves systemic is a difficult undertaking.  The capacity to view the world in systemic ways seems an innate characteristic that some individuals possess.  Might it be the case that being a systems thinker is dependent on holding a particular worldview?  Systems theorists have evolved tools and methodologies to help people do systems thinking.  Is being a user of systems methods the same as being a systems thinker? Are certain cognitive competencies, styles, or preferences required for people to make effective use of such tools and methodologies

Living with extreme weather events : an exploratory study of psychological factors in at-risk communities in the UK and Belize.

Questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews were conducted in flood risk areas in the UK and hurricane risk areas in Belize, Central America. The research was designed as a cross-hazard, cross-cultural study of psychological factors contributing to responses to the risks of extreme weather events (EWEs) as no other studies comprising all of these elements were found in a review of the literature. The main research themes, based on information gathered from at-risk communities, from experts in the field of Disaster Risk Reduction (ORR) and from applied literature across a number of disciplines involved in ORR were; the role of prior experience, attributions of responsibility of and for self and others, trust, community and place attachment, engagement in preparedness behaviours and decision making style. Based on an identified overlap between EWEs and climate change research, a section on beliefs about climate change and the wider natural environment was included. The research was exploratory to assist in the design of more focused future studies and the application of existing psychological theory to the context of EWEs. Results showed that the themes of prior experience, trust and place attachment emerged the most strongly. Decision-making did not show the expected links with other themes. Gender differences were found particularly in perceptions of risk, as found in previous risk perception research and in reported engagement in preparedness behaviours. This has important implications for the design of risk communication strategies. Engagement in preparedness behaviours, whilst intended to be a central theme was not able to be used as intended, as it was constrained in its value in this study by being a subjective measure. The Belize sample showed more positive attitudes across the study themes, but it is difficult to ascertain if this was a reflection of true differences or of a difference in the way in which surveys are completed. Further research is needed on this theme. Additional country-specific issues were raised by the qualitative study in Belize, such as the importance of development issues and of traditional knowledge in the management of risks. Results offer both useful descriptive information for application to policy and give direction and focus for the development of future studies designed to apply psychological theory to the problems posed by human interaction with natural hazards. Outline suggestions for a number of future studies are provided, centring on further and more detailed exploration of the major emergent themes

Education for an emerging society

"Social evolution is showing us some interesting patterns in the behaviour of our society. It seems that we have in some ways trapped ourselves within the structures that we have created. Throughout the brief history of the educational systems typical of our time, we have encouraged the development of competences in people that best serve the needs of the structures of the current paradigm in our culture and not the people. It seems that we have been trained and educated to improve technology, processes and organisations as our primary goal, and have neglected as a result the well-being of people, of the animals, plants and of the planet itself. In this article we point out some indicators that are encouraging us to see new patterns emerging that relate to our individual and collective consciousness. In the paper we also share some practical examples that present different approaches to learning. We can sense changes at many leverage points in our society. For example, at the widest level in our ways of organising, ways of learning, ways of understanding, ways of being and ways of doing. We argue that these changes are often provoked by problems and opportunities of an emerging "innovation based" thinking, and by the higher levels of collective and individual consciousness. The paper presents "systemic thinking" as one of the key elements when searching for more effective and sustainable new solutions. It also presents a possible scenario at the higher education level in a connection with the commercial world as viewed by the Challenge:Future global youth, by the authors' experiences from the field (for example corporate environments and local communities) and by experiences gained from using innovative approaches in the higher-education teaching.

Data associated with paper " Revealing the palaeoecology of silent taxa: selecting a proxy species using modern data".

species-by-site-matrix-for-cooccurrence-analysis.csv contains the presence-absence forest metacommunity matrix used in the co-occurrence analysis. It has 90 native tree species (including B. tawa) at 1741 sites, and includes the environmental conditions at those sites.species-obs-for-niche-modelling.csv contains the presence-only species observations used to build the niche models, along with the environmental conditions and unique climate bin at those locations. Site locations has been removed due to liscensing conditions of the NVS data, and all NVS site identifiers have been anonynimised. Note that the site-by-species matrix requires transposing to run with the R scripts associated with this paper, and other datasets (e.g., climate raster layers) may be required for some parts of the scripts to run.</p