System-subsystem modeling with an application to disability in older adults

描述（由申请人提供）：该项目旨在探索一种新的方法，称为系统-子系统依赖网络，用于建模大型复杂系统。这项试点研究的主要动机是应用系统分析的老年人残疾的研究。与社会和行为科学的许多其他系统方法一样，残疾建模涉及多种数据源，如试点实验，流行病学和临床研究，人口普查数据和监测系统。它还涉及多个子系统-系统内的组件在结构和功能上都是单独内聚的。虽然子系统在整个系统上提供了外部和隐性知识的有意义的覆盖，但它们往往必须使用不同的数据源和不同的数据集进行单独校准。一个方法上的挑战是协调重叠的子系统，以及潜在的参数不一致的个别校准的子系统。该项目扩展了一个灵活的工具-广义依赖网络-来解决这些问题。通过模拟实验，国家的最先进的计算工具进行测试，实现系统-子系统依赖网络。除了探索使用广义依赖网络的操作系统子系统的方法的关键思想，这个试点项目还经验性地测试了该方法的适用性，以简化的disablemet模型，这是限制在物理和认知子系统，使用数据从两个老化的研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The project aims to explore a novel approach, called system-subsystem dependency network, for modeling large, complex systems. This pilot study is primarily motivated by an application of system analysis to the study of disablement in older adults. Like many other system approaches to social and behavioral sciences, the modeling of disablement involves diverse data sources such as pilot experiments, epidemiologic and clinical studies, census data, and surveillance systems. It also involves multiple subsystems - components within a system that are individually cohesive both in structures and functions. While subsystem provides a meaningful overlay of external and tacit knowledge over the entire system, they often have to be individually calibrated using diverse data sources and different data sets. A methodological challenge is to reconcile overlapping subsystems as well as the potential parametric inconsistency across individually calibrated subsystems. The project extends a flexible tool - the generalized dependency network - for solving such problems. Through simulation experiments, state-of-the-art computational tools are tested for implementing the system- subsystem dependency network. Besides exploring the key idea of using generalized dependency network for operationalizing the system-subsystem approach, this pilot project also empirically tests the applicability of the method to a simplified disablemet model, which is restricted to the physical and cognitive subsystems, using data from two studies of aging.