Revista Economic 67:Supplement (2015)
ECOSYSTEM MODELING FOR SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT
CISMA Ioana-Cristina1
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania
Abstract
Setting new coordinates in modeling in order to ensure sustainable
development in the context of the Europe 2020 strategy requirements / Horizon 2020
is a priority for protecting natural resources. The current challenges are in identifying
the key aspects of IT processes, economic and ecosystem problems to ensure
sustainable development. The main objectives are: a. understanding that creation and
dissemination of complex system are the basic factors of economic growth; b.
modeling ecosystem should take into account a strategy based on memetic
engineering, bounded rationality and Just in time decisions. Among the
conclusions: a. ecosystem modeling should take into account a strategy that sets out
the way forward, focus effort, ensure consistency and flexibility; b. sustainable
management has to provide a balance between socio-economic and ecologicaleconomic systems.
Keywords: ecosystem, memetic engineering, sustainable management, bounded
rationality.
1. Introduction
Setting new coordinates in modeling in order to ensure sustainable
development in the context of the Europe 2020 strategy requirements /
Horizon 2020 is a priority for protecting natural resources. The current
challenges are in identifying the key aspects of IT processes, economic and
ecosystem problems to ensure sustainable development. The main objectives
are: a. understanding that creation and dissemination of complex system are
the basic factors of economic growth; b. modeling ecosystem should take into
1
Ph.D. student, Faculty of Sciences/Department of Mathematics and Informatics, cristha_83@yahoo.com
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account a strategy based on memetic engineering, bounded rationality and
Just in time decisions.
This research paper is a point of intersection in fields such as decision
support systems, intelligent systems, resource management and statistics. In a
knowledge-based society, the creation and dissemination of complex systems
are the basic factors of economic growth. Europe 2020 strategy focuses on
three priorities: intelligent growth (innovation, education and digital society),
sustainable growth (competitiveness, climate, energy and mobility) and
inclusive growth (jobs and skills, combating poverty) [20]. It becomes evident
that a population that is aware of the importance of this strategy generates
minimize costs in other public sectors.
Strategic thinking, being smart by association with the creative
thinking, operates for periods of 3-5 years or even up to 10 years, as a
reasoning process that can generate new solutions and build mechanisms for
their implementation. By evaluating competitive advantages, risks and barriers
that exist or may arise during the implementation of the strategies proposed by
Horizon 2020 (Figure 1), elements of an organization's weakness can be
turned into strengths and threats in the external environment - the
opportunities.
Figure 1: Integrating development of socio-economic and research strategies for
European Union 2020 logical diagram
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Every year, people working in decision-making must consider new
parameters when dealing with the management of ongoing projects and
planning new ones, being able to understand the impact and opportunities
of each project. Carbon emissions, water availability and biodiversity are
just some of the relatively new areas that attract increasingly more detailed
control. The concept of joining these areas impact assessment is named
ecosystem services. Ecosystem based services will become in the coming
years, a standard category of performance measures [17].
Standard MEA (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [27]) offers
four categories of ecosystem services:
Providing services: goods and products resulting ecosystem,
Regulating services: natural processes established ecosystem,
Cultural services: non-material benefits obtained from ecosystems,
Support services: functions that maintain the other services.
Ecosystem services are the benefits provided by ecosystem functioning
health services and safety of people
2. Rationale
This research paper proposes an approach based on memetic
engineering, bounded rationality, Just in time decisions and complexity to
help in promoting a more efficient economy, in terms of resource use, greener
and more competitive. The experimental model capable of reaching goals is to
develop a management system that allows management and modeling data
provided by environmental specialists, relevant to the sustainable management
of natural resources and ecosystem services.
Goods and services that ecosystem provides, are vital for maintaining
the welfare and future economic and social development. Their disappearance
will require the adoption of costly alternative [24]. It is necessary to ensure a
higher degree of awareness among decision makers and people in terms of the
economic value of ecosystem goods and services. The relationship economy environment should be optimized, and the proposed model seeks to draw
attention to this decline in order not to be necessary in the future paying a
huge price. The environment is the most comprehensive public good, as it
provides support life on earth, sources of raw materials for the economy,
landfill sites and threats to individuals and corporate social and human .
Sustainability Science (fig. 2) is based on the concepts of
sustainability and sustainable development (H. Komiyama, K. Takeuchi,
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2006) and general purpose includes assessment, reduce and minimize the
consequences of human impact on planetary systems [25].
Figure 2: Connection between sustainability and complexity
Science of
sustainability
Study object:
complex system
Based on:
complexity
theory
Works and coexist
Is
Has their
on the levels:
nondetermin
origin in
economic, social,
istic
chaos theory
environmental and
cultural
The
study of complex systems is a new approach to science that
investigates how relations between the parties give rise to collective behaviour
of a system and how the system interacts with its environment and form
relationships [1].
The objectives of this paper, in accordance with the European
framework program Horizon 2020, are finding answers to the questions "Do
we take the best decisions in economic terms without take into account the
depletion of natural resources? Or Best economic decisions take into account
the ability of self-regulation and support of ecological systems?". Sure, we all
want to live in a clean environment in a well-balanced and safe to use nonrenewable resources in a responsible manner and not to leave future
generations without resources, but contribute through our actions in carrying
them? Sustainable development is the ability of human society to ensure the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs (Brundtland Report, 1978).
3. Defining main concepts
In an attempt to reduce environmental failures due to economic
growth, here will be defined basic terms to understand the need of thinking,
model and design ecosystems by transdisciplinary perspective.
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A short definition of a meme might be "an idea, behavior or style that
spreads from person to person within a culture" (Meme, Merriam-Webster
Dictionary, [21]). Memes acts as a transport unit of cultural ideas, symbols or
practices that can be transmitted from one person to another through writing,
speech, gestures, rituals. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural
analogues to genes that self-replicate, evolve and respond to selective
pressures [8], [5].
Memetic engineering is a term developed and invented by Leveious
Rolando, John Sokol and Gibran Burchett while they investigated and
observed people's behavior after being exposed intentionally (knowingly and
unknowingly case) to certain thematic meme. Memetic engineering is the
creation and development of theories or ideologies based on an analytical
study of society, culture, their way of thinking and the development of their
minds, the change of human beliefs through different ways of thinking [22]. In
the study of ecosystem, can be identified positive meme (e.g. specific habitat
requirements) and negative meme (e.g. hydropower development, poaching,
pollution, etc.).
Bounded rationality present the idea that in the decision-making
process, the rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have,
cognitive limitations of their minds, and finite time that they have to make a
decision. This term was proposed by Herbert A. Simon as an alternative basis
for mathematical modeling of decision-making process, as used in economics,
political science and related disciplines; complete rationality as optimization,
decisions concerning a completely rational process to find the optimal choice,
given the available information [7]. Using What-if decisions it was tried to
gather all the possibilities that bounded rationality cannot manage (we live in
an open, heterogeneous, dynamic, and uncertain environment, [5]).
The term ecosystem is characterized by its components: physical,
chemical, biological, economic, social, cultural, spiritual. The assessment of
this system is a comparison between economic and social benefit and
ecological loss. Description of ecosystem state is performed using Level III
indicators (indicators of environmental or ecological, socio-economic
indicators), indicators of level II (environmental groups on environmental
factors / categories ecological-economic systems and indicators socioeconomic, health and culture) and core indicators (indicators biophysical
environment, economy, social, health and food, for culture).
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Ecosystems provide human socio-economic systems, resources and
services, their use should be within the carrying capacity and self-regulation of
ecosystems ([3]), their overcoming generates environmental degradation [2].
4. Research method
Research methodology appeals to identify the key aspects of
ecological-economic processes and information to ensure sustainable
development. Model based on the evaluation of ecological-economic relations
systems (experimental data) represent experimental approach to process
modeling, which covers: planning and selection of model structure; parameter
estimation; model validation.
The complex system aims to create a database with the appropriate
structure to further processing; establishes ways of using natural resources and
ecosystem services, and at the same time, to measure the economic efficiency;
will be relevant to the resources for sustainable management of case studies on
lotic systems; can evaluate and model the decision processes through "what if
scenarios, based on statistical and non-statistical tools.
The statistical survey based on secondary analysis will be
systematized and analyzed on the basis of procedural and quantitative
identification techniques, environmental impact being processed with different
software tools.
5. Conclusions
The conclusions are: a. following Horizon 2020 strategy, modeling
ecosystem for sustainable management involves methods based on memetic
engineering, where memes are used in decision making; b. sustainable
development is all forms and methods of socio-economic development, whose
foundation is the first to provide a balance between the socio-economic and
ecological-economic systems; c. in any organization, ecosystem modeling
should take into account a strategy that sets out the way forward, focus efforts,
ensure consistency, without which the organization would continually change
direction, and ensure flexibility.
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