From complexity to strategic planning for sustainable reconstruction - Rebuilding After Disasters: From Emergency to Sustainability - page 249

and public and private spaces of different natures and different uses.
In situations of such multi-level complexity, some way to tackle the interlocking
problems is necessary, and it must translate into coordinated action plans for
each of the involved parties - even if there is no obvious “project leader.”
This sort of situation calls for a systems approach to problem definition
and to problem-solving; the systems approach helps to get a handle on the
complexities and to support the decision-making processes of the many
stakeholders.
The systems approach
As defined by Hall, 2 a system is a set of elements having relations between
them and their attributes, and the key to the systems approach lies in choos-
ing the class of elements to be attended to and the kinds of relationships that
are of interest in a given context. In other words, a given complex situation
can be considered as a system from a number of different points of view.
In the five complexities just mentioned, for example, one can understand
a situation and its participants in political and social terms (these are the
“elements” in the definition of a system) and then consider the relationships,
which, for better or for worse, anticipate how they do (or might) interact for
the reconstruction challenge. Similarly, the same situation can be differently
described in terms of economics, techniques, organizational patterns and
functional patterns. For example, in Chapter 11, Roger Zetter and Camillo
Boano pick up on the politico-social and organizational complexity of re-
construction programs, describing the challenges of integrating strategies of
local, national and international institutions into one coordinated response.
In a systems approach, each one of these entities can be conceived of as part
of the same system (working toward the same goal), and their relations and
roles can be understood as part of the system. In Chapter 12, Lee Bosher
points out the need for professionals engaged in reconstruction to understand
traditional and historic power relations at the local level.
In this way, each level of the general complexity is powerfully apprehended
in terms not so much of the individual parts that make up the system (which
are many and heterogeneous) but rather in terms of the patterns of parts
(which are few) and the relationships between them, which can be formal
(explicitly chosen and defined) or, no less important, informal (those relation-
ships that do not correspond to legal or administrative responsibilities).
However, because of the very fact that there are several levels of complexity
within the reconstruction task, it is important that some enriched systems
approach allows them to be seen together, since one view of a system (the
politico-social view, for example) is closely tied into the others (the economic,
technical, functional and organizational views, in this instance). Here,
another concept borrowed from the world of systems engineering can help,
and that is the notion of environment .