This new interdisciplinary work presents system dynamics as a powerful approach to enable
analysts build simulation models of social systems with a view toward enhancing decision
making. Grounded in the feedback perspective of complex systems the book provides a practical
introduction to system dynamics and covers key concepts such as stocks flows and feedback.
Societal challenges such as predicting the impact of an emerging infectious disease estimating
population growth and assessing the capacity of health services to cope with demographic
change can all benefit from the application of computer simulation. This text explains
important building blocks of the system dynamics approach including material delays stock
management heuristics and how to model effects between different systemic elements. Models
from epidemiology health systems and economics are presented to illuminate important ideas
and the R programming language is used to provide an open-source and interoperable way to build
system dynamics models. System Dynamics Modeling with R also describes hands-on techniques that
can enhance client confidence in system dynamic models including model testing model analysis
and calibration. Developed from the author's course in system dynamics this book is written
for undergraduate and postgraduate students of management operations research computer
science and applied mathematics. Its focus is on the fundamental building blocks of system
dynamics models and its choice of R as a modeling language make it an ideal reference text for
those wishing to integrate system dynamics modeling with related data analytic methods and
techniques.
