The book addresses the vital and interwoven areas of energy, environment, and the economy within the field of sustainability research. Fundamental technical details, empirical data, and case studies taking into account local and international perspectives are included. Issues such as energy security, depleting fossil fuel reserves, global warming and climate change, as well as novel energy technologies are covered. The dynamic global response will be discussed from the perspective of policy, technology, and economics. Vital details in the form of text boxes, illustrations, graphs, tables and appendices are included. The book will serve as reference book for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, academics, policy makers, NGOs and developmental sector professionals within the field.

This book presents the latest in decision-making tools, techniques, and solutions for policy makers to utilize in overcoming the challenges faced by healthcare systems. With contributions from experts world-wide, an array of healthcare management models, techniques, and integrative solutions are presented, drawing on econometric, system dynamics, and agent-based models as well as state-of-the-art empirical studies. As total healthcare spending (both total expenditures on health as a percentage of GDP and average spending on per capita) increases across most of the world's economies, healthcare systems continue to face challenges in terms of cost, quality, and access, as a result of its fragmented nature. Consequently, healthcare managers and policy makers require innovative integrative approaches and solutions to better manage complex, dynamic healthcare systems. This volume offers researchers and policy makers an insightful and critical review of the state of the art in healthcare modeling, with a particular focus on system dynamics, agent-based models, and modern empirical studies. It will be of interest to those in the fields of health, business management, and information systems.

Computer simulation-based education and training is a multi-billion dollar industry. With the increased complexity of organizational decision making, projected demand for computer simulation-based decisional aids is on the rise. The objective of this book is to enhance systematically our understanding of and gain insights into the general process by which human facilitated ILEs are effectively designed and used in improving users' decision making in dynamic tasks. This book is divided into four major parts. Part I serves as an introduction to the subject of "decision making in dynamic tasks", its importance and its complexity. Part II provides background material, drawing upon the relevant literature, for the development of an integrated process model on the effectiveness of human facilitated ILEs in improving decision making in dynamic tasks. Part III focuses on the design, development and application of Fish Bank ILE, in laboratory experiments, to gather empirical evidence for the validity of the process model. Finally, part IV presents a comprehensive analysis of the gathered data to provide a powerful basis for understating important phenomena of training with human facilitated simulation-based learning environments, thereby, help to drive critical lessons to be learned. This book provides the reader with both a comprehensive understanding of the phenomena encountered in decision making with human facilitated ILEs and a unique way of studying the effects of these phenomena on people's ability to make better decision in complex, dynamic tasks. This book is intended to be of use to managers and practitioners, researchers and students of dynamic decision making. The background material of Part II provides a solid base to understand and organize the existing experimental research literature and approaches.

This book broadly explains the requirement to focus on core components in a business and provides a case study of open-pit mining operations throughout the book to understand the management perspective of large organizations. With globalized approaches of large businesses and the rising requirement of understanding the needs of modern organizations, it is necessary to focus on key areas of businesses to ensure sustainability of operations. Organizations look into achieving a high return on investments and short-term measures in increasing sales or revenue is considered unsuitable. It is a necessity to look for sustainability and continuous methods of innovation to boost efficiency. This book provides a case study based on large organizations and uses qualitative methodologies where data was collected using in-depth interviews of respondents from various mining companies in the top and middle-level management from different parts of the world, detailing the state of the art of information systems currently used in large scale open-pit miming (LSOPM). This book provides a sound knowledge of cutting-edge factors to the reader for managing the business to attain operational excellence and long-term sustainability, and caters to a broad spectrum of management and technical readers.

Today's ever more complex world creates challenges for decision makers. This volume reviews the principles underlying complex decision making, the handling of uncertainties in dynamic environments, and the various modeling approaches. Beginning with a discussion of the underlying concepts, theories and empirical evidence, the book gives you a range of practical tools and techniques for decision making in complex environments and systems.

This book presents the latest tools, techniques, and solutions that decision makers use to overcome the challenges faced by their sustainable supply chains. Given the ever increasing significance of socio-economic and environmental factors, the management of sustainable supply chains has become a complex and dynamic task. Multiple and conflicting objectives of stakeholders including suppliers, manufacturers, service providers, and retailers add to the complexity of decisions that modern day managers of supply chains face. With the unprecedented technological developments and innovations at hand, sustainability can be maximized for all the activities of a supply chain including: service concept and product design, material sourcing and procurement, manufacturing processes, delivery of the final product, and end-of-life management of the product. Consequently, the sustainable supply chains' problems require a systematic and integrated approach. Modeling and simulation, in general, as well as system dynamics and agent-based modeling, in particular, have the capabilities to deal with the complexity of sustainable supply chain related problems. This book will appeal to professionals and researchers in the field.

This book is about improving human decision making and performance in complex tasks. Utilizing systems thinking approach, this book presents innovative and insightful solutions to various managerial issues in various domains including agriculture, education, climate change, digital transformation, health care, supply chains, and sustainability. Practical insights and operational causal models are systematically presented. The key features of the didactic approach of this book are core knowledge, numerous tables and figures throughout the text, system archetypes, and causal loop models. This book serves as a text for college and university courses on Systems Thinking for Management Decision Making in Complex Tasks. Researchers use the developed “causal models� to design and evaluate various decision-aiding technologies. It is used as a source of practical information for a broad community of decision-makers, researchers, and practitioners concerned with the issue of improving human performance in complex organizational tasks.

This books explains a strategy that a country can meet its CO2 emission reduction targets (e.g., as are in Paris Agreement) with a dominant share of nuclear power with a balanced energy supply mix. The book starts with an introduction to the subject of energy policy, mechanisms, and CO2 emissions, and the complexity of the CO2 reduction goal. It introduces the system dynamics approach as a solution modeling approach for dealing with the complexity of CO2 reducing policies and mechanisms. The book presents the dynamic model and its key parameters and then elaborates the structural and behavioral validity of the dynamic model. The book gives an intensive review to do that comparative analysis involving China, India, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Pakistan. The last half of the book focuses on the case in Pakistan. The author reviews Pakistan's Intended Nationally Determined Contribution and other key sources from Pakistan's Ministry of Energy and related institutions. Using Pakistan's case data, the author applies the system dynamics modeling approach whereby a dynamic model, capable of representing the important interactions among various sectors of the electricity supply sector of Pakistan. This book is intended to be of use to policymakers, managers and practitioners, teachers, researchers, and students of design and assessment of policymaking for the complex, dynamic energy systems

This book provides research results and shares experiences in the area of supply chain management. It addresses topics such as risk reduction of lesser marginal profits, disrupted supply chain management, and potential points of business failure. This book explores the "new normal" of the business supply chain. The didactic approach informs global enterprises on how to deal with the most significant issues in the current supply chain management. The book shows an in-depth analysis of post-COVID opportunities and challenges and acts as an initiative for readers to understand the risks, opportunities, and concerns resulting from the pandemic situation and is a key driver for business management among industry professionals and enterprises. Readers will learn new insights and procedures to better manage multitier supply chains, predictability, and estimation of binding capacity. The book details modeling and technology-based customer demand and response management solutions. New techniques, methods, and perspectives dealing with the estimation, acceleration or deceleration, and flexibility of logistics capacity are particularly emphasized throughout the manuscript. Real-world cases dealing with various aspects of the new normal for supply chains are analyzed. The book is useful for industry professionals and enterprise firms in business management to effectively understand risks, opportunities, and concerning the pandemic situation.

The roles and applications of various modeling approaches, aimed at improving the usefulness of energy policy models in public decision making, are covered by this book. The development, validation, and applications of system dynamics and agent-based models in service of energy policy design and assessment in the 21st century is a key focus. A number of modeling approaches and models for energy policy, with a particular focus on low-carbon economic development of regions and states are covered. Chapters on system dynamics methodology, model-based theory, fuzzy system dynamics frame-work, and optimization modeling approach are presented, along with several chapters on future research opportunities for the energy policy modeling community. The use of model-based analysis and scenarios in energy policy design and assessment has seen phenomenal growth during the past several decades. In recent years, renewed concerns about climate change and energy security have posed unique modeling challenges. By utilizing the validation techniques and procedures which are effectively demonstrated in these contributions, researchers and practitioners in energy systems domain can increase the appeal and acceptance of their policy models.

This books explains a strategy that a country can meet its CO2 emission reduction targets (e.g., as are in Paris Agreement) with a dominant share of nuclear power with a balanced energy supply mix. The book starts with an introduction to the subject of energy policy, mechanisms, and CO2 emissions, and the complexity of the CO2 reduction goal. It introduces the system dynamics approach as a solution modeling approach for dealing with the complexity of CO2 reducing policies and mechanisms. The book presents the dynamic model and its key parameters and then elaborates the structural and behavioral validity of the dynamic model. The book gives an intensive review to do that comparative analysis involving China, India, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Pakistan. The last half of the book focuses on the case in Pakistan. The author reviews Pakistan’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution and other key sources from Pakistan’s Ministry of Energy and related institutions. Using Pakistan’s case data, the author applies the system dynamics modeling approach whereby a dynamic model, capable of representing the important interactions among various sectors of the electricity supply sector of Pakistan. This book is intended to be of use to policymakers, managers and practitioners, teachers, researchers, and students of design and assessment of policymaking for the complex, dynamic energy systems

This edited volume presents chapters on the dynamics of global climate change and global warming in the Middle East. In this region, it should be noted that even slightly warmer weather can result in an increased demand of energy along with its lower supply, as well as lower labor productivity. This text focuses on modeling, simulation, system dynamics, and agent-based modeling in dealing with these issues. The latest decision making tools, techniques, and innovative solutions used to overcome these challenges are presented. Many distinguished researchers contribute their work herein. The audience for this volume includes policy makers, researchers, and students unified by the common goal of making better decisions in the sustainable production and consumption of energy. The practical orientation of the chapters within each part is intended to suit the practitioners: managers and decision makers in the energy sector of the Middle East region.

This book broadly explains the requirement to focus on core components in a business and provides a case study of open-pit mining operations throughout the book to understand the management perspective of large organizations. With globalized approaches of large businesses and the rising requirement of understanding the needs of modern organizations, it is necessary to focus on key areas of businesses to ensure sustainability of operations. Organizations look into achieving a high return on investments and short-term measures in increasing sales or revenue is considered unsuitable. It is a necessity to look for sustainability and continuous methods of innovation to boost efficiency. This book provides a case study based on large organizations and uses qualitative methodologies where data was collected using in-depth interviews of respondents from various mining companies in the top and middle-level management from different parts of the world, detailing the state of the art of information systems currently used in large scale open-pit miming (LSOPM). This book provides a sound knowledge of cutting-edge factors to the reader for managing the business to attain operational excellence and long-term sustainability, and caters to a broad spectrum of management and technical readers.

The book addresses the vital and interwoven areas of energy, environment, and the economy within the field of sustainability research. Fundamental technical details, empirical data, and case studies taking into account local and international perspectives are included. Issues such as energy security, depleting fossil fuel reserves, global warming and climate change, as well as novel energy technologies are covered. The dynamic global response will be discussed from the perspective of policy, technology, and economics. Vital details in the form of text boxes, illustrations, graphs, tables and appendices are included. The book will serve as reference book for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, academics, policy makers, NGOs and developmental sector professionals within the field.

This book presents the latest tools, techniques, and solutions that decision makers use to overcome the challenges faced by their sustainable supply chains. Given the ever increasing significance of socio-economic and environmental factors, the management of sustainable supply chains has become a complex and dynamic task. Multiple and conflicting objectives of stakeholders including suppliers, manufacturers, service providers, and retailers add to the complexity of decisions that modern day managers of supply chains face. With the unprecedented technological developments and innovations at hand, sustainability can be maximized for all the activities of a supply chain including: service concept and product design, material sourcing and procurement, manufacturing processes, delivery of the final product, and end-of-life management of the product. Consequently, the sustainable supply chains' problems require a systematic and integrated approach. Modeling and simulation, in general, as well as system dynamics and agent-based modeling, in particular, have the capabilities to deal with the complexity of sustainable supply chain related problems. This book will appeal to professionals and researchers in the field.

This book presents the latest in decision-making tools, techniques, and solutions for policy makers to utilize in overcoming the challenges faced by healthcare systems. With contributions from experts world-wide, an array of healthcare management models, techniques, and integrative solutions are presented, drawing on econometric, system dynamics, and agent-based models as well as state-of-the-art empirical studies. As total healthcare spending (both total expenditures on health as a percentage of GDP and average spending on per capita) increases across most of the world's economies, healthcare systems continue to face challenges in terms of cost, quality, and access, as a result of its fragmented nature. Consequently, healthcare managers and policy makers require innovative integrative approaches and solutions to better manage complex, dynamic healthcare systems. This volume offers researchers and policy makers an insightful and critical review of the state of the art in healthcare modeling, with a particular focus on system dynamics, agent-based models, and modern empirical studies. It will be of interest to those in the fields of health, business management, and information systems.

The roles and applications of various modeling approaches, aimed at improving the usefulness of energy policy models in public decision making, are covered by this book. The development, validation, and applications of system dynamics and agent-based models in service of energy policy design and assessment in the 21st century is a key focus. A number of modeling approaches and models for energy policy, with a particular focus on low-carbon economic development of regions and states are covered. Chapters on system dynamics methodology, model-based theory, fuzzy system dynamics frame-work, and optimization modeling approach are presented, along with several chapters on future research opportunities for the energy policy modeling community. The use of model-based analysis and scenarios in energy policy design and assessment has seen phenomenal growth during the past several decades. In recent years, renewed concerns about climate change and energy security have posed unique modeling challenges. By utilizing the validation techniques and procedures which are effectively demonstrated in these contributions, researchers and practitioners in energy systems domain can increase the appeal and acceptance of their policy models.

Computer simulation-based education and training is a multi-billion dollar industry. With the increased complexity of organizational decision making, projected demand for computer simulation-based decisional aids is on the rise. The objective of this book is to enhance systematically our understanding of and gain insights into the general process by which human facilitated ILEs are effectively designed and used in improving users’ decision making in dynamic tasks. This book is divided into four major parts. Part I serves as an introduction to the subject of “decision making in dynamic tasks�, its importance and its complexity. Part II provides background material, drawing upon the relevant literature, for the development of an integrated process model on the effectiveness of human facilitated ILEs in improving decision making in dynamic tasks. Part III focuses on the design, development and application of Fish Bank ILE, in laboratory experiments, to gather empirical evidence for the validity of the process model. Finally, part IV presents a comprehensive analysis of the gathered data to provide a powerful basis for understating important phenomena of training with human facilitated simulation-based learning environments, thereby, help to drive critical lessons to be learned. This book provides the reader with both a comprehensive understanding of the phenomena encountered in decision making with human facilitated ILEs and a unique way of studying the effects of these phenomena on people’s ability to make better decision in complex, dynamic tasks. This book is intended to be of use to managers and practitioners, researchers and students of dynamic decision making. The background material of Part II provides a solid base to understand and organize the existing experimental research literature and approaches.

Using a system dynamics approach, this book illustrates the physics of fundamental accumulation processes (stocks and flows) across the demand and supply sectors of energy systems. Examples of system dynamics simulation models are presented where these accumulation processes are driving the behavior of the system. Based on these modeling efforts, two cases (the socio-economic and environmental implications of the energy policy of Pakistan and the dynamics of green power in Ontario, Canada) are analyzed and discussed. By studying the dynamics of the fundamental structures of an energy system, the reader gains an enhanced understanding of the stocks and flows of complex systems as well as their role in energy policy. This book is of use to managers and practitioners, teachers, researchers, and students of design and assessment of policy making for complex, dynamic energy systems.

Today's ever more complex world creates challenges for decision makers. This volume reviews the principles underlying complex decision making, the handling of uncertainties in dynamic environments, and the various modeling approaches. Beginning with a discussion of the underlying concepts, theories and empirical evidence, the book gives you a range of practical tools and techniques for decision making in complex environments and systems.

This book discusses the adoption of learning management systems (LMS) in higher education institutions. It presents influential predictors that may impact instructors' behavioral intention to adopt learning management systems in the context of Arab culture, as well as a unique model of technology acceptance that draws on and combines previous technology adoption models (i.e., a modified unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model - UTAUT2). Moreover, this study extends the UTAUT2 model by including Hofstede's (1980) cultural dimensions, and technology awareness as the moderators of the model. It also describes the explanatory technique approach used to collect quantitative data from the instructors at higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia and were analyzed with structural equation modeling using SPSS/Amos software. The findings revealed that facilitating conditions were the strongest predictor of behavioral intention to adopt an LMS, followed by performance expectancy and hedonic motivation, technology awareness, and cultural dimensions exerted a moderating influence on instructors' behavioral intention to use LMS in their teaching. By including new constructs, this becomes the first study of its kind exploring instructors' use of LMS in Higher Educational Institutions of Saudi Arabia and other countries of the Middle East. It offers practical insights for a broad range of researchers and professionals at higher education institutions and serves as a reference guide for designers of learning management systems (e.g., blackboard systems), policymakers, and the Ministry of Education staff.

This book is about improving human decision making and performance in complex, dynamic tasks. The defining characteristics of a dynamic decision task are that there are a number of decisions required, that decisions are interdependent and that the environment in which the decision is made is transient and feedback is pervasive. Examples of dynamic tasks include the sustainable management of renewable resources and how businesses might allocate resources for research and development (R&D) projects. Decision making in dynamic tasks can be improved through training with system dynamics-based interactive learning environments (ILE's) that include systematic debriefing. Some key features of the book include its didactic approach, numerous tables, figures, and the multidimensional evaluative model. Researchers can use the developed "evaluation model" to gauge various decision-aiding technologies. How to Improve Human Performance in Dynamic Tasks appeals to those interested in the design and evaluation of simulation-based decision support systems, as well as policy makers, students, researchers, and industrialists concerned by the issue of improving human performance in organizational tasks.