modelBasicOrientation
Extends from Icons.InformationProcessing (Icon for information processing molecules).
Information
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Basic Orientation will provide two outputs: an aggregate performance score (y_perf) and a score indicating the minimum sustainability (y_sus) according to a set of basic orientor inputs u.
While a system is free to emphasize certain orientors over others (i.e., freedom in the choice of weights according to preferences/strategies), no system can excape the pressures put upon it from its environment and other systems therein. In a much cited report to the Balaton Group Hartmut Bossel [22] identified six basic orientors that will guide a (living) systems' evolution in order to maintain viability [10, p. 185]:
| Basic Orientor | Description |
| EXISTENCE | The system must be compatible with, and able to exist in the normal environmental state. The information, energy, and material inputs necessary to sustain the system must be available. |
| EFFECTIVENESS | The system should on balance (over the long-term) be effective (not necessarily efficient) in its efforts to secure scarce resources (information, matter, energy) from, and to exert influence on its environment. |
| FREEDOM OF ACTION | The system must have the ability to cope in various ways with the challanges posed by environmental variety. |
| SECURITY | The system must be able to protect itself from the detrimental effects of environmental variability, i.e., variable, fluctuating, and unpredictable conditions outside the normal environmental state. |
| ADAPTABILITY | The system should be able to learn, adapt, and self-organize in order to generate more appropriate responses to challenges posed by environmental change. |
| COEXISTENCE | The system must be able to modify its behavior to account for behavior and interestes (orientors) of other (actor) systems in its environment. |
Each of the six basic dimensions highlights a necessary aspect of viability, that cannot be compensated by a good score in another dimension. Accordingly, the sustainability score according to the inputs for the basic orientors will be aggregated using the min operator. fo further details, see [10, Chapter 4].
Notes
- Bossel additionally points out, that next to environment-determined orientors, there are system-determined orientors (i.e., reproduction, psychological needs, and responsibility). The discussion can be limited to the six orientors from above plus psychological needs for systems containing sentinent beings [10, pp. 185-186].
- It is advisable to work with dimensionless indicator scores on the closed unit interval, where a score of 0 indicates unsustainable performance, while a score of 1 would indicate the best possible performance. (This also conicides with the notion, that all continuous utility functions can be limited to the closed unit interval without loss of generality.)
- The basic orientors have to be operationalized in any real application and a lot of though has to go into finding fitting indicators (which may "load" onto different orientors at the same time). For systems that are made up of subsystems, a subsystem's viability impact upon the total system's viability has to be considered explicitly.
See also
Parameters
| Type | Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real | weights | ones(nPerf) | Weights for calculating a weighted average performance score (default = equal weights) |
| AggregateFunctions | func | AggregateFunctions.arithmeticMean | Function to apply for aggregation (aggregatePerformance.func) |
| Structural Parameters | |||
| Boolean | hasSentinentBeings | false | = true, if the system comprises sentinent beings with psychological needs |
| Boolean | hasConstantWeights | true | = true, if constant weights are to be used for performance aggregation |
Connectors
| Type | Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interfaces.Connectors.RealMultiInput[nPerf] | u_weights | Weights to be used for performance measurement | |
| Interfaces.Connectors.RealMultiInput[BasicOrientors] | u | Basic orientors to monitor a system's sustainability | |
| Interfaces.Connectors.RealInput | u_psy | Psychological needs indicator (optional) | |
| Interfaces.Connectors.RealOutput | y_perf | Aggregate performance score for the monitored system | |
| Interfaces.Connectors.RealOutput | y_sus | Aggregate degree of sustainability for the monitored system |