Which approaches are there to couple System Dynamics models with GIS?

12 December 2015 9 1K Report

We would like to couple Forrester's (good old) System Dynamics (SD) models with geoinformation-systems (GIS) to model/simulate spatial migration processes.

Of course, as a straight-forward approach, you could link concrete (SD) 'levels' to the spatial entities' attribute values (using ISO/OGC jargon, you might denominate these entities as "features"). Note that adjacent levels/rates must not necessarily refer to neighbouring features...

What are the most prominent scientific works that deal with this topic?

Do you know about other promising approaches to couple these two modelling worlds (GIS and SD)?

I'm really looking forward to your ideas!

Enrique Kremers

Have a look at Netlogo or Anylogic, both are tools that allow you to use shapefiles / geodatabases and simulate SD equations coupled to some spatial elements.

Harisankar Krishnadas

Dear Benno,

AnyLogics can used for this purpose. Please check the link below, it shows how SD and GIS can be linked.

With regards

Harisankar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4gHwp6D8R4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeUTHdZqHRo

Matthias Otto Mueller

Hi Benno

I've never done this myself, but I remember a paper (see below), where Vensim and a GIS software were coupled through Python. The basic logic was to simulate the model for one time step, then pass the values to the GIS software, perform calculations in GIS based on Vensim model values, pass the values from GIS back to Vensim, then calculate the next time step based on the values from the GIS and so forth... The paper provides code examples.

http://www.eng.uwo.ca/research/iclr/fids/publications/products/86.pdf

Further, I remember seeing a presentation as part of the Xmile webinar series that included land-use change modeling. See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM9BHPnernQ

http://xmile.systemdynamics.org

Good luck with this!

By the way, I am very interested how you end up going about this challenge. I'd be delighted to learn how you eventually solved this. The company I work for is likely to want to expand into this direction in a couple of years, so I'd appreciate to hear back from you. Please feel free to follow up with any questions you think I may be able to help with.

best

Matthias

Leonard Malczynski

Benno,

There have been many attempts to do this. I know of 3 successful approaches with Powersim Studio: NorkArt GIS, ArcMap, and Google Earth.

One piece of research to look at firts id Ben Dor and Kaza in System Dynamics Review 28(2) A theory of spatial systems archetypes. Searching Google for system dynamics and GIS also returns much material.

Please summarize your results.

Len

Giuseppe Noce

interesting topic, are there news ? i am a vet and use system dynamics to model animal diseases. GIS is very important tool in my job.

Ahmed Abdeltawab Abdelgawad

I can recommend this PhD dissertation "Synthesizing System Dynamics and Geographic Information Systems in a new method to Model and Simulate Environmental Systems" by Sameh Gharib, the University of Agder, Norway. Available online at http://hdl.handle.net/1956/3296