Systems Engineering Science

Duane Hybertson ()
Additional contact information
Duane Hybertson: The MITRE Corporation

Chapter 37 in Handbook of Systems Sciences, 2021, pp 1041-1070 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter addresses the scientific foundation of systems engineering (SE) and how it can and should support the practice of SE. Changes occurring in the nature and scope of SE are driving an expansion in scope of the science that underpins SE practice. Because of that relationship, the chapter describes the changes in SE and in science-based engineering (SBE), and then describes the SE Science (SES) resulting from the changes in nature and scope of SE. Changes in SE are presented as a contrast between classic SE and this new, emerging SE. The expansion that SE is experiencing – beyond its traditional application domains such as defense, transportation, and energy into even more complex domains such as healthcare, law, social systems, and national policy making – is discussed, along with the increasing prominence of autonomous and intelligent machine agents and other elements of change. This expansion also necessitates a corresponding expansion in supporting science, from the traditional mechanical and physical sciences into life and social sciences, as well as making clearer the need for systems and computational sciences. It is fortunate that the sciences needed for this broader scope do not have to be invented; they already exist, and just need to be more explicitly applied, leveraged, and adapted to SE. Part of the leverage discussion is how the expanded SES can be made more accessible (and translatable) to practitioners of the expanded SE discipline. The changes exhibited in emerging SE and SBE, and the agent orientation in which they are presented in the chapter are captured in a generalized agent model that is a unifying framework formalized in an appendix to the chapter.

Keywords: Systems engineering science; Science-based engineering; Generalized agent model; Organic model; Collective actualization; Social systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-15-0720-5_18

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789811507205

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-15-0720-5_18

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().