Some Basic Considerations on the Design
and the Interpretation of Indicators in the
Context of Modelling and Simulation
Jochen Wittmann
1 Indicators: In General, in Mathematics, in Modelling
and Simulation
Indicators are necessary and widely used means to understand system behavior. An
overview on the work concerning multi-indicator systems with focus on a ranking
of the indicator quantities gives (Bruggemann et al. 2014).
This paper does not focus on a ranking of different indication aspects a system
provides, but on aggregation these aspects to a single compressed value.
The definition of “indicator” bases on the fact, that the system (or model)
quantity of interest is difficult to observe or completely hidden within the system.
This kind of definition can be found e.g. in the field of economic sciences as
“Measurable variable used as a representation of an associated (but non-measured or
non-measurable) factor or quantity.” (Businessdictionary 2017). The same reference
gives the representative example for an indicator with the “consumer price index
(CPI) [that] serves as an indicator of general cost of living which consists of many
factors some of which are not included in computing CPI.” (Businessdictionary
2017).
Beside economics, there is a wide range of other domains using indicators
intensively: Biology knows indicator plants or organisms that are representatives
for special types of ecosystems (see e.g. Haseloff 1982), but also indicators in the
sense of summarizing measures for the state of the environment such as the index of
biodiversity for example as a measure for the intactness of an ecosystem (Campbell
and Reece 2003).
J. Wittmann ()
Environmental Informatics, HTW Berlin, University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany
e-mail: Jochen.Wittmann@HTW-Berlin.de
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
R. Bruggemann et al. (eds.), Measuring and Understanding Complex Phenomena,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59683-5_1
3
and the Interpretation of Indicators in the
Context of Modelling and Simulation
Jochen Wittmann
1 Indicators: In General, in Mathematics, in Modelling
and Simulation
Indicators are necessary and widely used means to understand system behavior. An
overview on the work concerning multi-indicator systems with focus on a ranking
of the indicator quantities gives (Bruggemann et al. 2014).
This paper does not focus on a ranking of different indication aspects a system
provides, but on aggregation these aspects to a single compressed value.
The definition of “indicator” bases on the fact, that the system (or model)
quantity of interest is difficult to observe or completely hidden within the system.
This kind of definition can be found e.g. in the field of economic sciences as
“Measurable variable used as a representation of an associated (but non-measured or
non-measurable) factor or quantity.” (Businessdictionary 2017). The same reference
gives the representative example for an indicator with the “consumer price index
(CPI) [that] serves as an indicator of general cost of living which consists of many
factors some of which are not included in computing CPI.” (Businessdictionary
2017).
Beside economics, there is a wide range of other domains using indicators
intensively: Biology knows indicator plants or organisms that are representatives
for special types of ecosystems (see e.g. Haseloff 1982), but also indicators in the
sense of summarizing measures for the state of the environment such as the index of
biodiversity for example as a measure for the intactness of an ecosystem (Campbell
and Reece 2003).
J. Wittmann ()
Environmental Informatics, HTW Berlin, University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany
e-mail: Jochen.Wittmann@HTW-Berlin.de
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
R. Bruggemann et al. (eds.), Measuring and Understanding Complex Phenomena,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59683-5_1
3