Systems perspectives: clarity through examples

Thirty five years ago, in his book Educating the Reflective Practitioner, Donald Schon (1987, 3) wrote:

In the varied topography of professional practice, there is a high hard ground overlooking a swamp. On the high ground, manageable problems lend themselves to solution through the application of research-based theory and technique. In the swampy lowland, messy, confusing problems defy technical solution. The irony of this situation is that the problems of the high ground tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals or society at large, however great their technical interest may be, while in the swamp lie the problems of greatest human concern. The practitioner is confronted with a choice. Shall he remain on the high ground where he can solve relatively unimportant problems according to prevailing standards of rigour, or shall he descend to the swamp of important problems where he cannot be rigorous in any way he knows how to describe?

It is in such real-world practical problems that systems approaches come into their own. This issue of our journal tries to bring clarity to such approaches by collecting a cross section of examples. These examples clearly display relevance to real world issues, but with approaches that, somewhat contrary to the Schon quote above, constitute a rigour of their own as well. David Elms captures well this tension between rigour and relevance. On the one hand, he says in the festschrift volume for David Blockley, published previously in this journal, that ‘the systems approach is not easily systematized’ (Elms 2010). On the other, he does advocate what he calls a ‘systems stance’ (Elms 2020), involving principles such as sufficiency, requisite detail and consistent crudeness, among others. It is for this reason that this issue starts with his paper (Elms 2023) that describes an investigation into the feasibility of eliminating drivers’ assistants in locomotive cabs.

The other four papers have their own frameworks of rigorous inquiry. Emma Houiellebecq, Kristen MacAskill, and Federico Sittaro (2023) employ probably the most structured of these frameworks – i.e. causal loop diagrams (Blair et al. 2021) – to derive insights regarding impacts to essential services in fragile contexts by using a case study on Venezuela. Agarwal et al. (2023) arrive at proposals for safer and resilient schools in seismic regions, following stakeholder consultations in Nepal after its 2015 earthquake. Alvi and Alvi (2023) ask why dams fail, using the 2020 Edenville Dam as an example. The collection closes with suggestions on practical ethical frameworks for civil engineering and environmental systems by Tonatiuh Rodriguez-Nikl and Kory Schaff (2023), reflecting on lessons from the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. All the papers are grounded in a spectrum of real-world contexts; and also deal with failure in one way or another. Some of them focus more on learning from the past (Alvi and Alvi; Rodriguez-Nikl and Schaff); others on describing current realities (Houiellebecq et al.; Agarwal et al.); and one specifically on envisaging the future (Elms). A detail of note is that Huiellebecq et al., while evaluating the current functionality of system elements (high, medium, low), also assign a trend status to them (improving, stagnant, worsening).

The call for these papers identified hierarchical structuring as a key systems perspective, and all the papers reflect this. In some cases, this is done through the identification of wider systems within which the focal system is placed (note the focal school community in Agarwal et al.; and the system of systems in Houiellebecq et al.). At other times, the hierarchy is presented as a broader framework that needs to be explored – see the progression from the micro to the meso and macro dimensions of ethics advocated by Rodriguez-Nikl and Schaff. Sometimes the hierarchy is reflected in fault trees – see Alvi and Alvi, who present a shallow qualitative one; and Elms a deep quantitative one – or score aggregation trees (Agarwal et al.). In most of these cases the progression is from the lower to higher levels (or inner to outer layers) of the hierarchy; the exception being Houiellebecq et al. who extract their electricity and water subsystems from the developed overall system. The importance of analysis at different levels is tellingly brought out by Rodriguez-Nikl and Schaff, who quote Newberry (2010) with regard to human responsibility for the Katrina disaster: ‘proceeding correctly [but perhaps not ideally] at a low level is not the same as achieving success at a high level in a complex system’. [Parentheses in the quote are from Rodriguez-Nikl and Schaff, who probably take the quote to mean for example that a technically correct calculation by a junior design engineer cannot compensate for say an insufficient level of redundancy decided upon at a prior higher-level discussion.]

Another aspect reflected in all the papers is the combination of soft (social) and hard (technical) systems, or socio-technical systems. So, we have locomotives and drivers (Elms), physical and human systems in schools, inclusive of hazard education in curricula (Agarwal et al.), and ethics for socio-technical systems (Rodriguez-Nikl and Schaff). Alvi and Alvi, while delineating five geotechnical and four hydraulic causes for the Edenville Dam failure in their qualitative fault tree, identify the influence of human factors in no less than six of them. They also describe, for example, how the large revenues generated from recreational activities on the lake created by the dam were not accessible for upgrading its spillway capacity, because of competing owner priorities. Houiellebecq et al. talk about human activities ranging from gold mining that negatively impact the power supply, to tree maintenance under power lines that could improve power quality.

Interactions and feedback loops are another systems perspective identified in the call for papers. This is most visually evident in the paper by Houiellebecq et al. – they not only use causal loop diagrams but also generate feedback loops (to the causes) through either ‘cascading effects’ or ‘coping mechanisms’ arising from the ‘current states’ generated by the causes. Such interaction is socio-technical, as described by all authors and alluded to above, but also includes nature. The school resilience of Agarwal et al. is set in the context of earthquake risk; while Alvi and Alvi paint a fascinating picture of how the vagaries of weather (ground freezing, storm conditions) contributed to their dam failure, and engage in a ‘luck analysis’ of the situation. Analysis of interactions can help to identify root causes and deploy corrective measures effectively. For example, weaning poverty-stricken people away from gold mining through livelihood generation could reduce sedimentation in rivers and minimise risk of damage to hydroelectric turbines; which would make more sense than seeking to add capital intensive back-up power generators to the power system, especially since 80% of Venezuela’s power supply is hydroelectric (Houiellebecq et al.).

In many ways, all of engineering can be seen as a balancing of conflicting goals or constraints, while solving problems or seizing opportunities. The papers in this issue highlight this tension in various ways. The problem described by Elms arose because of the need to reduce rail employees (and hence costs), while maintaining safety. The ‘Edenville Dam system’ (if it can be called that) is described by Alvi and Alvi as having

strong pressures to generate power and revenue, reduce costs and increase profit, maintain property values, collect property taxes, protect the environment, and provide recreational benefit … all in opposition to the goal of dam safety … and in competition with each other, resulting in the various stakeholders being caught in a complex ‘game’ which was substantially noncooperative. [the selective culling of the text is mine]

They go on to say that ‘The stakeholders can be viewed as having acted rationally in pursuing their individual goals, but collectively their decisions resulted in an outcome which was bad for all of them’. When Rodriguez-Nikl and Schaff describe the introduction of ethics into value sensitive design, they talk about ‘value conflicts’ and trade-offs between different design options. It is clear that narrowly technical approaches will not deliver success in these various cases, thus necessitating the kinds of systems approaches described in this journal issue.

A dominant theme in the systems literature is the relationship between the ‘world’, which is the subject of inquiry, and the inquiry itself. Where Peter Checkland is concerned, in hard systems, the world is treated as systemic, and models of it as systematic, whereas in soft systems, the world is acknowledged as chaotic, and models of it as systemic (Checkland and Scholes 1999). Elms makes some reference to the world and models of it in his paper in this collection too. At any rate, aspects such as hierarchical structuring, interaction loops and the integral nature of hard and soft aspects can all be seen as properties of the world, although they can feature in the process of inquiry as well – e.g. fault trees (Elms; Alvi and Alvi) and score aggregation (Agarwal et al.). Note that while the action research methodology employed by Houiellebecq et al. is represented graphically as a linear process, their description of it (e.g. map drafting followed by map elaboration; qualitative data analysis obtained via documentation but supplemented by field visits) implies recursive improvement as well; and this too could be captured via ‘loopy diagrams’, similar to the systems map of their ‘world’.

So, whether for the world or an inquiry thereof, hierarchy can be represented in trees or Venn-type diagrams; and interaction via loops. In his paper, Elms introduces a new image, when he describes a ‘T-strategy’ for the process of inquiry itself, where the cross-bar of the T represents a ‘shallow’ analysis of the entire problem, while the vertical bar of the T represents a ‘deeper’ analysis of a focal part. Elms describes such selection as being on the basis of a typical section of rail line; and on an agreed focal rolling stock, namely long-distance freight trains [italics mine]. Another form of such selectivity is the notion of a ‘system boundary’, which is arguably a fiction in the real world, but a necessity for a manageable inquiry into it. So Agarwal et al. isolate the school community for analysis, but are aware of elements both within that system boundary (e.g. a borehole for water supply), and those that cross it (e.g. a water supply network). Houiellebecq et al. extract their electricity and water subsystems from the developed overall system, for the purpose of more focused sectoral analysis.

A final aspect of the inquiry process for a systems approach is its participatory nature. This is because a systems view is holistic by definition, and such holism can only be captured through stakeholder participation. Both Houiellebecq et al. and Agarwal et al. describe such processes in Venezuela and Nepal respectively, contexts that would have involved crossing cultures in both cases. Although Elms may not have crossed a national boundary in his work, he portrays the ‘world’ of the railways as having its own vocabulary. He therefore stresses the importance of communication skills, not least because he had to present his work regarding the reduction of employees to a (sceptical) union audience! Rodriguez-Nikl and Schaff advocate stakeholder participation, not as a part of their inquiry process, but as an element of the ethics infused value sensitive design that they promote. Alvi and Alvi present their disaster as being substantially a result of stakeholder competition and non-cooperation, thus underscoring the need for a reversal.

The intention in this editorial is to build on previous ones carried by this journal (Dias and Jowitt 2020; Godfrey, Agarwal, and Dias 2010) to clarify the nature of systems approaches. I have, elsewhere (Dias 2008), sought to provide some philosophical underpinnings for them as well. I apologise to the authors in this issue for any unintended errors in the process of interpretating their writings and fitting their ideas into my own. I thank them unreservedly for providing such rich material, not merely for this editorial, but rather for the continuing illumination of our readers. While embodying systems approaches, these articles also reflect key concepts that characterise engineering, namely practice, context, ethics, models and failure (Dias 2019).