International Journal of Intelligent Information Technology Application, 2009, 2(3):116-120

An Interpretive Approach to Drawing Weighted

and Most Frequent Causal Loop Diagram using
ELECTRE III and SUBDUE Methods
M. Jafari
Department of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), Narmak, Tehran, Iran
Email: jafari@iust.ac.ir

R. Hesam Amiri and A. Bourouni

Department of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), Narmak, Tehran, Iran
Email: {amiri_r, bourouni} @ ind.iust.ac.ir

Abstract—The effectiveness of system dynamics is totally
influenced by causal loop diagrams. These diagrams have
been valued as a tool for representing useful causal
structure of systems in order to further stock and flow
modeling. The interpretation of concepts and relations
makes it difficult to determine the real cause and effect
relations of the system. In this paper, an interpretive
approach to determining causal loop relationships is
developed. This approach uses ELECTRE III and SUBDUE
techniques in order to find the most important sources of
causal agreement among different stakeholders.
Index Terms— causal loop diagram, system dynamics,
Graph-based mining, group model building, soft system
dynamics, ELECTRE III, SUBDUE
I. INTRODUCTION
Causal loop diagrams have been used in system
dynamics for gaining insights into complex systems.
When tackling complicated human activity systems,
understanding causal relationship depends on experts'
points of view. These experts have different
characteristics and work experience that might affect their
interpretation about system's causal structure.
In every organization managing means interpreting and
reacting to interacting event and ideas of the real
world [7]. From this point of view, there is no unique
definition of a determine situation, but each individual
has his own perspective in defining and interpreting it [9].
The difference is between hard and soft systems thinking.
The hard point of view of systems has an “objectivist”
that consider problems as independent of individual’s
point of views and interpretation. The soft systems
thinking has a “subjective” that take into consider the
importance of participant’s perception [10]. It is not
always possible for an analyst/expert to recognize and
draw different causal relations in a complex system using
an “objectivist” approach. It is recognized that there
should be no single analyst, but a process of debate
should take place among different actors and
stakeholders [11].
Vennix's [12] works showed that system dynamics
models should be built by a group in a process of group
model building. Group model building is discussed by
Vennix et al. [13][14][15][19], Vennix [17][18], Luna-
Reyes et al. [20], Andersen et al. [21][22], Rouwette et
al. [23] and Visser [24].
Lane [25] has argued that system dynamics is very
different from hard systems thinking. Even on the basis
of the classic texts of Forrester it is less austerely
“objective” than is often represented. If one considers
recent work by Wolstenholme, Senge and Lane, and the
various craft skills that have grown up around the
modeling, then it simply cannot be considered as “hard”,
or “optimizing”, or “deterministic.”
The organization of the paper is as follows: in the
second section, interpretive systems thinking and practice
is presented. In the forth to sixth section, three steps of an
interpretive approach to drawing causal loop diagrams are
depicted.
II. INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS THINKING AND PRACTICE
The interpretive systems approach is frequently
referred to as “soft systems thinking” because it gives
pride of place to people rather than to technology,
structure or organization. In contrast to the functionalist
approach, its primary area of concern is perceptions,
values, beliefs and interests. It accepts that multiple
perceptions of reality exist, and sometimes come into
conflict, and wants to help managers and consultants to
work successfully in a “pluralistic” environment of this
kind.
Interpretive approaches do not assume that
organizations are just ‘‘human machines’’ in which
people are organized according to their functions, all of
which are, geared to some unitary objective. Instead, they
assume that people may, rightly or wrongly, fight their
own corner rather than be subsumes into some

1999-2459/09/$25.00 ©2009 Engineering Technology Press

overarching objective. Thus these approaches make
different assumptions about the nature of organizations.
Soft approaches stress the importance of organizational
and individual learning. They stress that, when people
face problematic situations this is a chance for them to
learn how to cope with such circumstances in such a way
that their performance is improved.
In hard approaches, it is typically assumed that a
model is a would-be representation of part of the real
world. By contrast, in soft approaches the idea is that
models are developed so as to allow people to think
through their own positions and to engage in debate with
others about possible action.
Some interpretive systems approaches are Interactive
Management [26], Social Systems Design [27], Strategic
Assumption Surfacing and Testing, Social Systems
Science [1] [2], Soft Systems Methodology [3][4][5][6],
Soft Systems Thinking [28], Soft Operation Research,
Soft Cybernetics, Soft System Dynamics [25].
"Soft systems thinking" is heavily influenced by the
“root metaphor” of contextualism. So it is very important
to have a common sense about relevant aspects of the
nature of problem.
III. OUTRANKING OF CONCEPTS USING ELECTRE III
METHOD
This method of decision making deals with inaccurate,
imprecise or ill-determination of data. In ELECTRE
III [29][30] the outranking relation can be interpreted as a
fuzzy relation. There are some definitions and formulas.
In this section, we introduce them in short.
To take into imperfect character of the evaluation of
actions, ELECTRE III makes use of discrimination
(indifference and preference) thresholds.
Discrimination thresholds account for the imperfect
nature of the evaluations, and are used for modeling
situations in which the difference between evaluations
associated with two different actions on a given criterion
may either:
· Justify the preference in favor of one of the two
actions (preference thresholds, p j );
· Be compatible with indifference between the
two actions (indifference thresholds, q j ).
· Be interpreted as a hesitation between opting for
a preference or indifference between the two
actions.
Veto thresholds express the power attributed to a given
criterion to be against the assertion “ a outranks b ”, when
the difference of the evaluation between g (b) and g (a ) is
greater than this threshold. These thresholds can be
constant along a scale or it can also vary.
Credibility index characterizes the credibility of the
assertion “ a outranks b ” and aSb . r ( aSb) denotes this
index which is defined by using both concordance index,
c ( aSb) , and discordance index for each criterion g j in F ,
that is, d j (aSb) .
The concordance condition will be:
c( aSb ) = å w + åj wj j j
jÎJ S jÎJ Q
Where,
g j (a ) + p j ( g j (a )) - g j (b)
jj =
p j ( g j (a )) - q j ( g j (a ))
And concerning the coalition of criteria in which aSb
J S = { j Î J : g j (a ) + q j ( g j (a )) ³ g j (b)}
Concerning the coalition of criteria in which bQa
J Q = { j Î J : g j (a ) + q j ( g j (a )) p g j ( a ) £ g j (b) + p j ( g j (b))}
To define the value of the discordance index, we
admitted that this value grows in proportion to the
difference g j (b) - g j (a ) . This index can be presented as
follows:
ì
ï
ï 1 if g j (b) ³ g j (a ) + v j ( g j ( a ))
ï
d j ( aSb) = í 0 if g j (b) £ g j ( a ) + p j ( g j (a ))
ï g j (b) - g j (a ) - p j ( g j ( a ))
ï otherwise
îï v j ( g j (a )) - p j ( g j ( a ))
The credibility index is defined as follows:
1 - d j ( aSb)
r ( aSb) = c ( aSb). Õ
{ jÎJ :d ( aSb)fc ( aSb)}
1 - c( aSb )
j
When d j (aSb) = 1 , it implies that r ( aSb) = 0 , since
c (aSb) p 1 .
Thus the definition of r ( aSb) is based on the
following main ideas:
a) When there is no discordant criterion, the
credibility of the outranking relation is equal to
the comprehensive concordance index.
b) When a discordant criterion activates its veto
power, the assertion is not credible at all, thus
the index is null.
For the remaining situation in which the
comprehensive concordance index is strictly lower than
the discordance index on the discordant criterion, the
credibility index becomes lower than the comprehensive
concordance index, because of the opposition effect on
this criterion.
IV. MINING OF FREQUENT PATTERNS FROM CAUSAL LOOP
DIAGRAM USING SUBDUE
Graph-based modeling has emerged as a powerful
abstraction capable of capturing in a single and unified
framework many of the relational, spatial, topological,
and other characteristics that are present in a variety of
datasets and application areas [31]. A number of
researchers have developed data mining algorithms that
work with graphs in many different fields such as link
analysis [32][33][34], semantic web [35], behavioral
modeling [36][37], VLSI reverse engineering [38].
SUBDUE [39] is a technique that can discover
interesting and useful Approximate substructure patterns
in structural data which is based on minimum description
length [40] principle and optional background
knowledge. Subdue uses a variant of beam search for its
main search algorithm, as summarized in Figure 1. It
grows a single vertex incrementally by expanding a node
in it. At each expansion it searches for the best total Causal loop for
description length: the description length of a pattern and interviewee no.3
the description length of the graph set with all the
instances of the pattern condensed into single nodes.
SUBDUE performs approximate matching to allow slight
variations of substructures, thus supporting the discovery
of approximate substructures.
SUBDUE’s search is guided by the MDL principle
given in Eq. (1), where DL( S) is the description length of Causal loop for
the substructure being evaluated, DL(G \ S) is the interviewee no.4
description length of the graph as compressed by the
substructure, and DL(G) is the description length of the
original graph. In this technique, the best substructure is
the one that minimizes compression ratio:

DL(S) + DL(G \ S) Causal loop for

Compressio n = (1) interviewee no.5
DL(G)

Step 1: Drawing causal loop diagram for each

individual. In this step, a skilled interviewer individually
draws causal loop diagrams for each stakeholder after a VI. DETERMINING KEY CONCEPTS
deep interview.
According to interviewee causal loops, we have five
Step 2: Working with diagrams (Identifying the root
adjacency matrixes which rows and columns show
metaphor). After drawing causal loop diagrams for each
concepts. Table 1 shows the deference and indifference
individual, they should be analyzed. In order to start
thresholds which is equal for all interviewees (criteria).
analyzing, the first step is to identify the key concepts
from diagrams. These key concepts will be used in
TABLE I.
further workshops. THE DIFFERENCE AND INDIFFERENCE THRESHOLDS

V. DRAWING INDIVIDUAL CAUSAL LOOPS

A é3 2 3 4 1ù
Suppose that we have five people that all of them have
B êê2 3úú
Criterion (i)
knowledge about an issue and with use of an expert 3 3 2
0£i£5
interviewer, their drawing of causal loop diagram are P = C ê2 0 3 1 2ú q 1
presented as below. ê ú p 3
D ê3 4 4 4 3ú
E êë0 3 1 1 3úû

Causal loop for By using ELECTRE III/IV software, we calculate the

interviewee no.1 preference of alternatives (concepts). The result is
represented in figure 1.

Causal loop for

interviewee no.2

Figure 1 - Preference of alternatives


As the figure is shown, D is the most preferable
concept. After that, A and B are preferable but they are
indifferent to each other. In the end, C and E are the least
preferable concepts.
VII. FINDING THE MOST FREQUENT CAUSAL LOOPS
By using SUBDUE open source software, if we let
SUBDUE's threshold value to be 0.5 then the resulted
graph is depicted by Figure 3.
Figure 2 – Frequent causal relationships detected by SUBDUE
Figure 3 shows the most frequent causal relationships
from every other five causal loop diagrams with threshold
0.5. Using this causal loop diagram and the preferences of
concepts from ELECRE III method, the final weighted
most frequent causal loop diagram is drawn (Figure 4).
Figure 3 – Final causal loop diagram drawn by SUBDUE and
weighted by ELECTRE III
VIII. CONCLUSION
System dynamics modelers look forward to an
approach for drawing causal loop diagrams which can
consider different perceptions of people. Hence, we have
developed an interpretive approach. With the proposed
approach, the complex causal relationships between
concepts are discovered. Key concepts are identified
using ELECTRE III, and then a most frequent graph is
discovered by SUBDUE. It is now possible to draw the
system's final weighted most frequent causal loop
diagram.
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M. Jafari an Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering
Department in Iran University of Science and Technology
(IUST), Tehran, Iran, with BE in Mechanical and ME in
Productivity and PhD in Industrial Engineering from IIT, Delhi.
Working in area of strategic planning, BPR, knowledge
management, with more that 30 research paper and five books
in area of Industrial Engineering.
R. Hesam Amiri received his BE in Industrial Engineering
from Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran in
2007, and currently is MSc student in the same university. His
research interests are in Knowledge Management, Information
Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Systems Modeling, and
Human Resource Management. He has published more than 10
papers in different conferences and journals.
A. Bourouni received her BE in Industrial Engineering from
Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran in 2007, and
currently is M.S.c student in the same university. Her research
interests are in Knowledge Management, Agent-based
simulation, Systems Modeling, and Human Resource
Management. She has published more than 6 papers in different
conferences and journals.