Systems Approach and Systems Analysis

Publisher Summary This chapter presents research on systems analysis. Assessing the modern state of systems research, and its potentiality and perspective for further development, it is necessary to pay attention to three circumstances that, to a large extent, define the present-day situation in this field. There is a steadily growing requirement for conducting systems research in very different fields of science, technology, and practical activity. The number of supporters of systems research has been increasing every year; specialists in different sciences, from theoreticians to policy-makers, hope to solve the problems facing them with help from its methods. These hopes are not unfounded, because systems research has been already convincingly demonstrated its practical usefulness. Research on the global problems of the modern world; the working-out of long-term programs to solve energy, ecological, food, and other similar problems; the extension of the methodology tools of systems analysis; and also much systems-theoretical work in the sphere of the fundamental science testify to the undoubted effectiveness of systems research. The systems approach, as its theoretical and methodological reflexion, may serve as the basis for elaboration of systems analysis problems. The reference to a systems approach seems to be appropriate because it is within its framework that some positive experience of methodological research in the application of systems ideas to different areas of science (biology, psychology, ecology and so on) has been accumulated. The reflective component is not yet developed well enough within systems analysis.