Viable Systems Modelling for climate change adaptation in the Gippsland Region

Abstract

This paper presents the creative use of Viable Systems Modelling (VSM) as a mechanism to help multiple interest groups develop a strategy for land use adaptation to climate change for the Victorian region of Gippsland. VSM is a technique for representing systems developed by Stafford Beer from the 1960s with a strong grounding in the cybernetics discipline (Beer 1966). Originally derived by examining organisms such as humans as a system, the conceptual framework of a recursive hierarchy where any system can be considered part of a supra-system and made up of sub-systems was formed. For a system to be 'viable', Beer and his colleagues established a number of requirements or laws about the sub..