Category: Dissertation

  • A Systems Approach to Port Phillip Bay

    A Systems Approach to Port Phillip Bay

    Port Phillip Bay is capable of providing for the 3.5 million people who dwell on the coast with a diverse and wealthy level of opportunity and exploitable capital. It is the combination of which that gives Port Phillip Bay a reputable identity. Port Phillip Bay is a complex system, socially, economically and environmentally. It operates…

  • Adaptive Management

    Adaptive Management

    Port Phillip Bay is home to multiple formal and informal institutions across a variety of scales. Government stakeholders (Table 11) operate on larger scales and have a greater level of resources. Decisions on this scale tend to be more long term and reactionary. Formal institutions take time to set up studies and then implement their…

  • Management and Governance

    Management and Governance

    Resilience is one approach to management. All forms of management require that stakeholders take action to alter the system or promote and sustain aspects deemed to be advantageous. Stakeholders in the Port Phillip Bay system are identifies in Table 8.

  • Stable States and Thresholds

    Stable States and Thresholds

    Disturbances can result in the collapse of the relationships between adaptive cycles at different scales. The collapse occurs when the relationship is pushed past a threshold. Systems reorganise themselves and produce a new identity as new relationships are formed. Thresholds therefore determine the system identity.

  • System Disturbances

    System Disturbances

    To improve the resilience of a system, potential perturbations must be identified along with their foreseen effects. Managers will not be able to identify all the disturbances that a system can undergo or the effects that could result. Surprise events are inevitable and could be beyond the scale of influence of managers.

  • Historic Indicators

    Historic Indicators

    As discussed adaptive cycles function at a variety of scales. Each component of a system also has its own adaptive cycle and they are linked in a spatial and temporal context. Interactions between the cycles involves the sharing of information or matter and as long as transfers are maintained, the system overall is sustained. Systems…

  • Cycle Assessment

    Cycle Assessment

    The system has shown it is capable to attract more tourists and for longer periods of stay and this has led to an increase in the value of takings.  Employment figures too have risen over the 2000-2009 period. Unemployed persons have remained steady and the trend for unemployment rates was, until 2008, down. The HPI…

  • Adaptive Cycle Indicators

    Adaptive Cycle Indicators

    A system’s resilience can only be assessed by determining its current position within the adaptive cycle. Socio-economic indicators will be used to determine the relative position of individual components within the cycle and a judgement made on the relative position of the focal system itself.

  • Component and Service Scales

    Component and Service Scales

    Systems change over time and space, it is unavoidable. To manage resilience, understanding that systems change across and influence multiple scales is needed. Scales above the focal system are also significant to maintaining resilience.

  • The Focal System

    The Focal System

    In order to ascertain the resilience of a system it must first be defined and bound. Port Phillip Bay as the focal system will include the water body and the major conurbations around its coast (Figure 5).