Systems, systems of systems, and the education of engineers

Abstract

The thesis presented here is that the result of engineering is the design, construction, or operation of systems or their subsystems and components and that the teaching of systems must be central to engineering education. It is maintained that current undergraduate engineering curricula do not give the student adequate appreciation of this major intellectual element of their profession. Five proposals for approaches to correct this deficiency are offered: opportunities for clinical practice throughout all the undergraduate years; the use of distributed interactive simulation technology in semester-long projects; courses or course material on the phenomenology and behavior of systems; use of project management tools in engineering clinics; and encouraging engineering faculty to spend some part of their sabbaticals engaged in system design or operation. Issues of implementation are addressed, including the scaling of these ideas to universities that must meet the needs of large numbers of students.

Systems of Systems: A Control Theoretic View

“…The term system of systems (SoS) has been used in the literature in different ways [7], [8]. Most definitions ( [7], [9], [10]) describe features or properties of complex systems linked to specific examples. The class of systems exhibiting behaviour of Systems of Systems typically exhibit aspects of the behaviour met in complex systems; however, not all complex problems fall in the realm of systems of systems.…”

“…The definitions that have been given so far [10], contain elements of what the abstract notion should have, but they are more linked to specific features and are linked to areas of applications. A literature survey and discussions on these definitions are given in [8], [9]. A more generic definition that captures the key features and which is a good basis for further development is given below [8]:…”

System Engineering Approach in Tactical Wireless RF Network Analysis

“…The research may help to develop a more systematic and automated approach for building "Bayesian network vulnerabilities graph" with weights assignment for vulnerability study in tactical wireless RF networks [11]. Bayesian network [17] is designed in vulnerabilities graph and models all potential attack steps in a given network.…”

Design space exploration in aircraft conceptual design phase based on system-of-systems simulation

“…Although this field has been growing significantly in recent years [4], it is still in the primary stage without a common definition [5][6][7]. Despite this, the basic features of these definitions are that an SoS is composed of a multitude of complex, independent, and heterogeneous systems, which work cooperatively, to achieve more capacities than the sum of individuals.…”