A short introduction to Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD)
Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) is a visual language used to describe non-linear systems. It's a very simple language with few elements (6) and fewer rules, but it's a very powerful tool to see systems you are working with daily completely differently. A fresh perspective reviles new opportunities and challenges never seen before. It helps to break the glass ceiling of more common practices.
Eventually, CLD is a collection of loops describing variables (measurable nouns in the system) causal interactions. Variables depict as an ellipse, while the causal impacts depict as a dotted line that connects them.
The dotted line can be tagged as positive (or S for the Same direction), or minus (of O for the Opposite direction). Plus indicate that growth or decline in one variable will cause the same impact on the other variable. Minus demonstrate that a decline in one variable will cause an increase in the other, and vice versa.
Lines can have a visual depiction of delays in impact. Variables should have a visual depiction of their behavior over time. The created lops can be reinforcing (all impacts are negative or positive, or there is an even number of negative impacts), or balancing (odd number of negative impacts).
CLD also coming with the known concept of archetypes. Those are known combinations of loops, delays, behavior over time, and certain goal-seeking that proven to be a known challenge to a system. Archetypes also coming with a proposed solution.
Modeling using this approach not just reviles a known system in a different way, it also provides a faster way to find challenges and resolve them.
Archetypes are not just providing law hanging fruits, looking at a system using them helps to expose deeper challenges. This is usually the case when the focus is on finding pre-define archetypes in a modeled system.
Causal Loop Diagrams are easy and powerful. They are extremely helpful when resolving complex problems. Learn them today and it will pay the effort in the future.
PhD Fellow (BCB) - University of Idaho(UoI)
1 年A casual lop diagram makes it easy to explain complex relations between variables. I am always creating a CLD when developing statistical models.
Interesting - What are tools to work with Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD)? Would be interesting to simulate dynamics and investigate stability in parameter space. By the way, it reminds me a bit of a board game (?kolopoly from Frederic Vester) I used to play as a kid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvP_6H1T6Vs
Extremely interesting. I assume this can be mapped to the dynamic systems simulator framework, which Natty pointed me to recently. If we combine this with a minimal static structures modeling approach (such as #OWL2 or Eclipse Modeling/eMof/OCL/#mcore) I see a lot of potential. This would link the worlds of Economic Simulations and Business Architecture. #VDML does this too, but with a huge, complex metamodel. Here we would reduce to the max!
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3 年Bishnu Chettri useful reference from a fellow Swan.