Engineering Resilient Complex Systems: The Necessary Shift Toward Complexity Science

Abstract

This position article addresses resilience in complex engineering and engineered systems (CES). It offers a synthesis of academic thinking with an empirical analysis of the challenge. This article puts forward argumentations and a conceptual framework in support of a new understanding of CES resilience as the product of continuous learning in between disruptive events. CES are in continuous evolution and with each generation they become more complex as they adapt to their environment. While this evolution takes place, new failure modes arise with the engineering of their resilience having to evolve in parallel to cope with them. Our position supports the role of an overarching complexity science framework to investigate the resilience of CES, including their temporal evolution, resilience features, the management and decision layers, and the transparency of boundaries between interconnected systems. The conclusion identifies the value of a complexity perspective to address CES resilience. Extending the latest understanding of resilience, we propose a circular framework where features of CES are related to a resilience event and complexity science explains the importance of interconnections with external systems, the increasingly fast system evolution and the stratification of heterogeneous layers.

Analysis of Resilience Situations for Complex Engineered Systems – the Resilience Holon

“…Risk analysis modeling, "must evaluate consequences for each risk scenario as functions of the threat (initiating event), the vulnerability and resilience of the system, and the time of the event" [21]. There is a need to "work with the reality that CES often change over time, developing new features, and evolving to meet changes in their operating environment" [1].…”

“…ne key factor in improving the resilience of complex engineered and engineering systems is understanding complex resilience situations, in which there may be multiple threats, interactions, and disruptions. The term complex engineered or engineering systems (CES) [1] includes both: (i) complex systems that are engineered, being the outputs of engineering activitysuch as railway networks, power plants and computers; and (ii) complex systems that carry out engineering, being the capability systems that design, manufacture, operate, supply, maintain, and decommission engineered systemssuch as the organizations that build or maintain rail networks.…”

Systemic Perspectives on National Infrastructure for a Sustainable, Resilient Net Zero Future

“…The conceptual model in Figure 1 and the systemic narrative that supports it draw upon an extensive literature review of potential systemic approaches to the characterisation of National Infrastructure (Dolan, 2017), a literature review of the application Rinaldi's six interdependency dimensions (Rinaldi et al, 2001) to National Infrastructure (Dolan and Street, 2019) and an extensive body of work on resilience. Dolan, (2017) observed that National Infrastructure can be characterised systemically as a complex adaptive system (Oughton et al, 2018), an interdependent system (Rinaldi et al, 2001); a sociotechnical system (STS); a high-risk (tightly coupled and interactively complex) system (Perrow, 2011); Large Technical Systems (LTS) (Hughes, 1989), an intentional and dynamic built system (Hollnagel, 2014), a complex engineered system (Punzo et al, 2020) or as a network of conversion points (Varga et al, 2014). Based on which, Dolan, (2017) concluded that each approach offers useful insights relevant to developing systemic understanding of the characteristics, performance, resilience and societal value of National Infrastructure.…”

Resilience in Industrial Internet of Things Systems: A Communication Perspective

“…Resilience is actually a popular topic in the area of complex science systems [7], [9], such as computer science, ecology, and environmental science. However, these works could not be easily extended to the communication scenario in IIoT, where infrastructure is highly coupled temporally and spatially.…”