Systems Approaches and Their Application

In the development of an international agenda for applied systems analysis Swedish experience, developed over a considerable number of years, embraces a wide range of application domains. One international focal point for the Swedish interest in systems analysis has been - the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, with its headquarters in Laxenburg outside Vienna. The Swedish Research Council for Env- onment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (Formas) is currently responsible for the Swedish contacts with . When Formas was established in it inherited the Swedish national committee for the promotion of contacts and systems a- lysis that was originally set up by the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research (frn ), which was abolished in conjunction with a major reform of the Swedish research ?nancing system. Within the framework of the Committee a special project was launched in line with a proposal by Gunnar Sjöstedt dealing with the Swedish experience in s- tems analysis and thus, indirectly, with themes related to most of 's activities. The project co-ordination and editorial tasks were given to Mats-Olov Olsson and Gunnar Sjöstedt under the direct surveillance of the Committee. Many of the Committee m- bers and their co-workers as well as several other Swedish scholars have contributed to this book. Several years of work have gone into bringing together Swedish experience in this ?eld, and we hope that the book will be interesting for an international as well as for a Swedish audience.

Concerns a single nation, but simultaneously contains a broad overview of systems analysis in a number of important issue areas, for research as well as practice, against a penetrating background description of what systems analysis is, how it functions, what problems it represents and what results

The Systems Approach: History and Schools of Thinking.- Systems and Systems Theory.- Schools of Systems Thinking - Development Trends in Systems Methodology.- Systems Analysis in Sweden - Examples of Projects Using a Systems Approach.- Systems Analysis in Geography.- Multi-Agent Systems, Time Geography, and Microsimulations.- Analyzing Biological Systems: The Brain as an Example.- Defining the Concept of Sustainability - a Matter of Systems Thinking and Applied Systems Analysis.- Systems Analysis in Sweden - Examples of Projects Using a Systems Approach.- Scenario-Based Methodologies for Strategy Development and Management of Change.- "Sweden in the Year 2021" - A Systems Study of Sweden's Future Environment.- Environmental Accounts - A Tool for Interdisciplinary Analysis.- Environmental Systems Analysis - Some Ongoing Research and Ideas About Future Developments.- Some Properties of Environmental Systems Analysis Tools - Life Cycle Assessment as an Example.- Systems Approaches in Development Work.- The Systems Approach in Research on International Relations: The WTO Negotiations.- Systems Analysis in Sweden - Examples of Projects Using a Systems Approach.- Humans and Complex Systems: Sustainable Information Societies.- Large Technical Systems: a Multidisciplinary Research Tradition.- Development Trends, Future Prospects and Needs.- Systemic Interventions in Sweden: Some Discernible Patterns.