Systems and their environments must be understood in an integrated manner because any changes in the systems will affect their environments and vice versa in the ubiquitous open systems. Existing studies classify systems based on the diversity of their interactions and the systems' responses to changes in their environments. However, the uses of such classifications are limited. We attempt to address this limitation by using morphological analysis (MA) to identify, represent and characterise the general system–environment complex (SEC) and its components. The latter, called ‘dimensions’, and their respective manifestations, termed ‘variants’, are integrated into the MA representation to enable a holistic understanding of SECs in terms of six dimensions and 101 variants. The resultant representation and characterisation will help researchers identify potential research opportunities, demonstrated through the construction of a variants intersection matrix, and help develop practical principles for system design and evaluation.

中文翻译：

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一般系统-环境复合体的形态分析：表示与应用

必须以综合方式理解系统及其环境，因为系统中的任何变化都会影响其环境，反之亦然，在无处不在的开放系统中。现有研究根据系统交互的多样性和系统对环境变化的响应对系统进行分类。然而，这种分类的用途是有限的。我们试图通过使用形态分析 (MA) 来识别、表示和表征一般系统-环境复合体 (SEC) 及其组件来解决这一限制。后者，称为“维度”，它们各自的表现形式，称为“变体”，被集成到 MA 表示中，以便从六个维度和 101 个变体方面全面了解 SEC。