Abstract for: An approach towards supporting the structuration of complex problems in System Dynamics through a web application

Understanding, abstracting and structuring complex problems is not an easy task. It demands from practitioners some expertise and talents that are usually developed through experimentation, many failures and successes, and a direct interaction with the problem’s stakeholders. For those starting in the process of modeling complex problems, this paper aims to describe a software tool specifically developed to support the process of structuring a complex problem using the System Dynamics (SD) language. The final goal behind this is to provide an input to the set of tools available for facilitating the phase of structuration of complex problems, previous to the process of modeling a problem using SD. The developed software tool must support and guide junior or beginner modelers in the process of retaining relevant information about a complex problem and structuring it in a generic form that later allows them to identify which elements previously stored may be considered as formal elements of a causal loop diagram, and later on, of a SD simulation model.