6Interactive Visualizations for Supporting Decision‐Making in Complex Socio‐technical Systems
Zhongyuan Yu, Mehrnoosh Oghbaie, Chen Liu, William B. Rouse and Michael J. Pennock
6.1 Introduction
Complex socio‐technical systems are typified by behavioural and social phenomena that significantly impact the functioning and performance of complicated engineered or designed systems. Hospitals are good examples, as are transportation systems, financial ecosystems, and many other types of enterprises. The key stakeholders in such systems are often important and influential policy‐ and decision‐makers. They need means to understand and manage the complexity of their systems, yet seldom do the systems have science and engineering skills to develop or perhaps even understand the models of their enterprises. Models and simulations allow the inclusion of organizational details yet afford a systematic analysis (Siggelkow, 2011), as well as bound outcomes to plausible ranges (Epstein, 2008).
We have many experiences of key stakeholders referring to our mathematical models or simulations as ‘magic boxes’ that produce predictions of how their enterprises will likely respond to a range of scenarios. These experiences have led us to realize that such stakeholders need much more hands‐on experience with models and simulations. They need to take the controls (sliders, radio buttons, etc.) and explore the nature of these creations. Such experiments can confirm or challenge their intuitions. In either ...