EAGER: Model-based Foundations of Collective Systems Design Theory

EARLY概念探索性研究资助（EAGER）资助支持基础研究，以创建和验证工程系统设计中的协作模型。工程系统包含了一个广泛的现实世界的系统，超越了传统的工程工件的界限，与关键的社会功能进行交互，并作出贡献。业绩部分由技术能力驱动，但也由社会结构，包括政策，市场，激励措施和目标。追求可持续性或安全性等共同目标需要代表多个公司、组织和机构的不同行为体之间的集体努力，这些行为体的个别目标可能相互冲突。现有的系统工程方法不符合分散的性质和工程系统固有的信息交换障碍。因此，工程系统开发往往导致系统比预期的成本更高，开发时间比预期的更长，并且不能满足期望的性能水平。该项目提供了一个数学框架和初步的实验结果，以了解如何协作，基于系统的方法可以实现工程系统设计中的共同目标。本课题的目的是研究交通系统、能源系统、国防系统等多种工程系统的基本成果，了解设计问题的结构和设计参与者之间的相互作用是如何促进或抑制集体行动的。一个数学框架将多参与者系统设计问题描述为一组有助于战略行为的设计决策和价值流。它建立在一个博弈论模型的系统设计作为一个两部分的决定：较低层次的决策选择设计，以最大限度地提高价值在一个固定的背景下和较高层次的决策选择一个集体战略，以最大限度地提高价值的互动效果。这个项目考虑了简化的两个玩家设计问题，其结构代表了四个典型的协调游戏。一个人类受试者实验要求角色扮演者完成一系列配对设计问题，以最大限度地提高个人目标。结果分析了问题结构和观察到的互动如何影响合作与非合作策略之间的平衡，同时控制人口和个性因素，相信会影响个人和集体的表现。了解技术和组织因素如何影响设计师的行为将有助于改善机制和激励，以实现预期的集体成果。

This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) grant supports fundamental research to create and validate models of collaboration in engineering systems design. Engineering systems encompass a broad class of real-world systems which go beyond traditional boundaries of engineered artifacts to interact with and contribute to key societal functions. Performance is partially driven by technical capabilities but also by social constructs including policies, markets, incentives, and objectives. Pursuing shared objectives such as sustainability or security requires collective efforts among a diverse set of actors representing multiple firms, organizations, and agencies with potentially conflicting individual objectives. Existing systems engineering approaches do not align well with the decentralized nature and barriers to information exchange inherent to engineering systems. Consequently, engineering systems development often results in systems that are more costly than anticipated, take longer to develop than anticipated, and fail to meet desired levels of performance. This project contributes a mathematical framework and preliminary experimental results to understand how collaborative, systems-based approaches can achieve shared objectives in the design of engineering systems. This project will yield basic results that are applicable to many kinds of engineering systems, including but not limited to transportation systems, energy systems and defense systems.The objective of this project is to understand how the structure of a design problem and interactions among design actors can facilitate or inhibit collective action. A mathematical framework characterizes a multi-actor system design problem as a set of design decisions and value flows contributing to strategic behavior. It builds on a game-theoretic model of system design as a two-part decision: lower-level decisions choose designs to maximize value in a fixed context and higher-level decisions choose a collective strategy to maximize value under interactive effects. This project considers simplified two-player design problems structured to represent four canonical coordination games. A human subjects experiment asks role-players to complete a series of pair design problems to maximize individual objectives. Results analyze how the problem structure and observed interactions influence the balance between cooperative versus non-cooperative strategies while controlling for demographic and personality factors believed to affect individual and collective performance. Understanding how technical and organizational factors influence designer behaviors will contribute to improved mechanisms and incentives to achieve desired collective results.