Postgraduate Programs

Course objectives

Sustainable management of renewable natural resources and territories involves taking into account several different decision making processes and scales of analysis, both of multiple stakeholders and the issues and interactions between the resource and management systems. The course aims at qualifying students for complex systems modelling:

  • system description and their interactions
  • qualification and quantification of the dynamics
  • the simulation of system behaviour under various management scenarios.

Course contents

  • From reality to models: simplifying for understanding. An introduction to systemic thinking
  • Systems Dynamics (SD) and their properties (emergence, thresholds, delays, counter-intuitive phenomena)
  • Model building: causal chart, flow chart, equations
  • The archetypal schemes of SD
  • Incorporation of the spatial dimension into models including choremes
  • Models of resource management through SD
  • The features of Stella software which allow programming in SD using a graphic interface
  • The computerised implementation of a model
  • Scenario building and operations simulation.

Teaching and learning methods

Lectures introduce the concepts of Systems Dynamics. Tutorials provide an introduction to the use of a Systems Dynamics software (Stella®) and the formalisation of archetypal interactions liable to be encountered (different feedback loop systems). Throughout a micro-project, based on a case study of natural resource management, students in small groups are led to develop a model and implement it.

Duration: 21h

  • The concepts of SD: 3h
  • Introduction to software: 9h
  • Micro-project: 9h

Course evaluation

Group assessment of micro-project reports.

Target skills

Understanding of Systems Dynamics and graphic modelling. The ability to use appropriate tools for modelling and simulating natural resource management. The capacity for a critical analysis of models.


UFR G-ENV — AgroParisTech

Montpellier campus
648 rue Jean-François Breton
BP 44494
34093 Montpellier Cedex 5
France