System analysis- Winter School on Towards Ecosystem Based Management of Marine Fisheries – Building Mass Balance Trophic and Simulation Models

Abstract

When addressing an issue in fisheries we may have to consider many interacting biological, economic, social and legal factors. Management plans ignoring one or other of these and concentrate on the remaining will fail when executed. Systems analysis is both philosophical approach and a collection of techniques developed explicitly to address complex problems. Its origin can be traced to Second World War by the military to deal with complex logical problems. It was later successfully applied in the fields of engineering, industrial dynamics, business management, economics and recently in biology, ecology and renewable natural resource management. Systems analysis emphasizes a holistic approach to problem solving and use of mathematical models to identify and simulate important characteristics of complex systems. In systems analysis complex problems are quantitatively addressed.