Abstract
Systems describe a whole composed of many interacting parts with a unifying framework; boundaries in space and time; external forcing factors; structural arrangements; functions; change and variability; and humans as both forcings and participants in the system. The nature of a system is to some degree, either simple or complicated or complex. This distinction between “complicated” and “complex” is important and subtle. Complex systems have heterogeneous parts with complex interactions that make them interdependent, coevolving, and subject to distributed control. The characteristics of the whole system emerge from the interactions between the components of the system giving rise to stability and changes that are often hard to predict and sensitive to initial conditions. Systems are a discipline all their own and require a disciplined systems approach to study. This chapter reviews some basics of food, energy, and water systems and how to move from separate systems to integrated systems-of-systems.
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Saundry, P., Ruddell, B.L. (2020). Systems Science. In: Saundry, P., Ruddell, B. (eds) The Food-Energy-Water Nexus. AESS Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies and Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29914-9_2
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