Category: Tools

Environmental Homeostasis

Replicated from

The Emergence of Environmental Homeostasis in Complex Ecosystems

The Earth, with its core-driven magnetic field, convective mantle, mobile lid tectonics, oceans of liquid water, dynamic climate and abundant life is arguably the most complex system in the known universe. This system has exhibited stability in the sense of, bar a number of notable exceptions, surface temperature remaining within the bounds required for liquid water and so a significant biosphere. Explanations for this range from anthropic principles in which the Earth was essentially lucky, to homeostatic Gaia in which the abiotic and biotic components of the Earth system self-organise into homeostatic states that are robust to a wide range of external perturbations. Here we present results from a conceptual model that demonstrates the emergence of homeostasis as a consequence of the feedback loop operating between life and its environment. Formulating the model in terms of Gaussian processes allows the development of novel computational methods in order to provide solutions. We find that the stability of this system will typically increase then remain constant with an increase in biological diversity and that the number of attractors within the phase space exponentially increases with the number of environmental variables while the probability of the system being in an attractor that lies within prescribed boundaries decreases approximately linearly. We argue that the cybernetic concept of rein control provides insights into how this model system, and potentially any system that is comprised of biological to environmental feedback loops, self-organises into homeostatic states.

See my related blog post for details.

Continue reading “Environmental Homeostasis”

Wonderland

Wonderland model by Sanderson et al.; see Alexandra Milik, Alexia Prskawetz, Gustav Feichtinger, and Warren C. Sanderson, “Slow-fast Dynamics in Wonderland,” Environmental Modeling and Assessment 1 (1996) 3-17.

Here’s an excerpt from my 1998 critique of this model: Continue reading “Wonderland”

Timing Vensim models

Need to time model runs? One way to do it is with Vensim’s log commands, in a cmd script or Venapp:

LOG>CREATE|timing.txt
LOG>MESSAGE|timing.txt|"About to run."
LOG>TIMESTAMP|timing.txt
MENU>RUN|o
LOG>TIMESTAMP|timing.txt
LOG>MESSAGE|timing.txt|"Ran."

These commands were designed for logging user interaction, so they don’t offer millisecond resolution needed for small models. For that, another option is to use the .dll.

Generally, model execution time is close to proportional with equation count x time step count, with exceptions for iterative functions (FIND ZERO) and RK auto integration. You can use the .dll’s vensim_get_varattrib to count equations (expanding subscripts) if it’s helpful for planning to maximize simulation speed.

Early warnings of catastrophe

Catastrophic Collapse Can Occur without Early Warning: Examples of Silent Catastrophes in Structured Ecological Models (PLOS ONE – open access)

Catastrophic and sudden collapses of ecosystems are sometimes preceded by early warning signals that potentially could be used to predict and prevent a forthcoming catastrophe. Universality of these early warning signals has been proposed, but no formal proof has been provided. Here, we show that in relatively simple ecological models the most commonly used early warning signals for a catastrophic collapse can be silent. We underpin the mathematical reason for this phenomenon, which involves the direction of the eigenvectors of the system. Our results demonstrate that claims on the universality of early warning signals are not correct, and that catastrophic collapses can occur without prior warning. In order to correctly predict a collapse and determine whether early warning signals precede the collapse, detailed knowledge of the mathematical structure of the approaching bifurcation is necessary. Unfortunately, such knowledge is often only obtained after the collapse has already occurred.

This is a third-order ecological model with juvenile and adult prey and a predator:

See my related blog post on the topic, in which I also mention a generic model of critical slowing down.

The model, with changes files (.cin) implementing some of the experiments: CatastropheWarning.zip

Circling the Drain

“It’s Time to Retire ‘Crap Circles’,” argues Gardiner Morse in the HBR. I wholeheartedly agree. He’s assembled a lovely collection of examples. Some violate causality amusingly:

“Through some trick of causality, termination leads to deployment.”

Morse ridicules one diagram that actually shows an important process,

The friendly-looking sunburst that follows, captured from the website of a solar energy advocacy group, shows how to create an unlimited market for your product. Here, as the supply of solar energy increases, so does the demand — in an apparently endless cycle. If these folks are right, we’re all in the wrong business.

This is not a particularly well-executed diagram, but the positive feedback process (reinforcing loop) of increasing demand driving economies of scale, lowering costs and further increasing demand, is real. Obviously there are other negative loops that restrain this one from delivering infinite solar, but not every diagram needs to show every loop in a system.

Unfortunately, Morse’s prescription, “We could all benefit from a little more linear thinking,” is nearly as alarming as the illness. The vacuous linear processes are right there next to the cycles in PowerPoint’s Smart Art:

Linear thinking isn’t a get-out-of-chartjunk-free card. It’s an invitation to event-driven unidirectional causal thinking, laundry lists, and George Richardson’s Dead Buffalo Syndrome. What we really need is more understanding of causality and feedback, and more operational thinking, so that people draw meaningful graphics, employing cycles where they appropriately describe causality.

h/t John Sterman for pointing this out.

Arab Spring

Hard on the heels of commitment comes another interesting, small social dynamics model on Arxiv. This one’s about the dynamics of the Arab Spring.

The self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on December 17, 2011 in the small Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid, set off a sequence of events culminating in the revolutions of the Arab Spring. It is widely believed that the Internet and social media played a critical role in the growth and success of protests that led to the downfall of the regimes in Egypt and Tunisia. However, the precise mechanisms by which these new media affected the course of events remain unclear. We introduce a simple compartmental model for the dynamics of a revolution in a dictatorial regime such as Tunisia or Egypt which takes into account the role of the Internet and social media. An elementary mathematical analysis of the model identifies four main parameter regions: stable police state, meta-stable police state, unstable police state, and failed state. We illustrate how these regions capture, at least qualitatively, a wide range of scenarios observed in the context of revolutionary movements by considering the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as the situation in Iran, China, and Somalia, as case studies. We pose four questions about the dynamics of the Arab Spring revolutions and formulate answers informed by the model. We conclude with some possible directions for future work.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1841

The model has two levels, but since non revolutionaries = 1 – revolutionaries, they’re not independent, so it’s effectively first order. This permits thorough analytical exploration of the dynamics.

This model differs from typical SD practice in that the formulations for visibility and policing use simple discrete logic – policing either works or it doesn’t, for example. There are also no explicit perception processes or delays. This keeps things simple for analysis, but also makes the behavior somewhat bang-bang. An interesting extension of this model would be to explore more operational, behavioral decision rules.

The model can be used as is to replicate the experiments in Figs. 8 & 9. Further experiments in the paper – including parameter changes that reflect social media – should also be replicable, but would take a little extra structure or Synthesim overrides.

This model runs with any recent Vensim version.

ArabSpring1.mdl

ArabSpring1.vpm

I’d especially welcome comments on the model and analysis from people who know the history of events better than I do.

Encouraging Moderation

An interesting paper on Arxiv caught my eye the other day. It uses a simple model of a bipolar debate to explore policies that encourage moderation.

Some of the most pivotal moments in intellectual history occur when a new ideology sweeps through a society, supplanting an established system of beliefs in a rapid revolution of thought. Yet in many cases the new ideology is as extreme as the old. Why is it then that moderate positions so rarely prevail? Here, in the context of a simple model of opinion spreading, we test seven plausible strategies for deradicalizing a society and find that only one of them significantly expands the moderate subpopulation without risking its extinction in the process.

This is a very simple and stylized model, but in the best tradition of model-based theorizing, it yields provocative counter-intuitive results and raises lots of interesting questions. Technology Review’s Arxiv Blog has a nice qualitative take on the work.

See also: Dynamics of Scientific Revolutions, Bifurcations & Filter Bubbles

The model runs in discrete time, but I’ve added implicit rate constants for dimensional consistency in continuous time.

commitment2.mdl & commitment2.vpm

These should be runnable with any Vensim version.

If you add the asymmetric generalizations in the paper’s Supplemental Material, add your name to the model diagram, forward a copy back to me, and I’ll post the update.