Saturday, August 19, 2006

Measuring Sustainability: Scope and System Levels

The first challenge of measuring a system to determine if it is sustainable is one of scope. We must define what interactions, and therefore what subsystems, are internal and external to the system we are measuring. We could measure a small abstract part of a system, but if the system we measure is not capable of all systems necessary to life, then how can we say it is sustainable? Our first objective is therefore to determine what is necessary for a system to be alive, or totipotential (capable of carrying out all necessary activities for life).

There are several definitions for claiming that something is "alive" in science, but more study has indicated that these are not hard requirements but rather guidelines. Based on one rigid definition or another, it is possible to say that one insect species is alive, and a very similar insect is 'not alive'. The challenge we face has already been solved by a great mind in systems science, who was adept with biology, social science, biochemistry, organizations and writing these concepts in way that was well defined and easy to understand. James G Miller wrote "Living Systems" after a great amount of research, and it is considered a monument in systems science.

Miller described a means of documenting our living processes using subsystems. Each subsystem was an abstract, performing simple operations like matter-energy storage, or outputting information. In his original text, there were 19 subsystems that processed matter-energy and information. Several years later the Timer subsystem was added to schedule and coordinate subsystem activities.

Another major concept was "shred-out". Each living system existed and interacts on several levels, Miller used examples of cell, organ, organism, group, organization, community, society, supranational system. With somewhat arbitrary selection of levels, each level used representatives of all 20 subsystems. There were few exceptions in some situations, e.g. organs do not directly reproduce, but organisms reproducing creates more organs. A cell reproduces through chromosomes and DNA/RNA and mitosis or meiosis. If a subcellular level was evaluated, one could note that organelles (similar in function to organs of an organism) do reproduce and are created based on use.

There are many interactions between system levels, a person makes a presentation to a group or organization using their mouth, etc. But it is also interesting to note that the other subsystems used to convey information, ranging from blackboard to video presentations, office productivity software used to make slides, and the projector are often owned as assets by the group or organization.

When attempting to measure the sustainability of a system, it is critical to associate the measurements to the appropriate level. A subsystem or suprasystem may die, fail, or change in a way that the connected living systems can no longer depend upon it. Noting these dependencies may allow the system we are measuring to survive beyond a critical failure. For example, a village lives on an island with a volcano. The Community of a village is dependent upon the island to provide it with a structure to live. If the volcano explodes, that does not mean the community (village) was unsustainable, that it did not have adequate government, food, supplies of food, etc. Noting that the suprasystem (island) was possibly unstable, a plan for evacuation and relocation could be created. In case of an emergency, a well functioning system (village) may make adequate emergency plans so that it persists beyond a critical change (volcano eruption).

Next time I will write about the different levels I propose for measuring the sustainability of human activities. I have also created some vector graphics as icons for systems modeling in Dia, an open source modeling application. (Living Systems with pretty icons and an easy to use free application.)

Unfortunately, adoption of Living Systems for creating models did not take off. I suspect that promotion and an easy to use tool were the two primary reasons it was not widely adopted. Here is a larger picture of the icons I made, one for each of the 20 subsystems.

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