Ensuring Flexible Design Strategies for Complex Systems Engineering.

本博士旨在研究复杂性科学工具和技术在系统工程和设计中的应用。像泰雷兹这样的公司越来越多地面临着设计和交付复杂工程系统的挑战，这些系统必须能够应对其操作环境和用户需求的持续变化。这些复杂系统的特点是它们的结构（它们的规模，组件的互联性和与环境交换信息/能量的能力），它们的动态行为（非线性，自适应，分散控制）和它们的行为（可能是紧急的，可能表现出非高斯分布）。考虑复杂性是很重要的，因为传统的系统工程和设计原则是建立在还原论和可分解性的基础上的，这是不足以处理复杂系统的起始假设。本研究探讨了复杂性科学方法在系统工程和设计中的应用。系统工程和设计原则包括：需求分析、系统思维、系统生命周期、体系结构框架和评估。可以从复杂性科学中利用的工具包括：图论，基于代理的建模，非线性动力学和信息论。本研究将分析这些方法的效用，以期为复杂性科学在系统工程和设计中的应用提供一个总体框架。

This PhD seeks to investigate the application of complexity science tools and techniques tosystems engineering and design. Increasingly, companies like Thales are challenged todesign and deliver complex engineered systems that must be able to cope with ongoingchange in both their operational environment and the requirements of their users. Thesecomplex systems are characterised by their architecture (their scale, interconnectivity ofcomponents and ability to exchange information/energy with the environment), theirdynamic behaviour (non-linear, adaptive, decentralised control) and their behaviour (whichmay be emergent, may exhibit non Gaussian distributions). It is important to considercomplexity because conventional systems engineering and design principles are built on afoundation of reductionism and decomposability which are inadequate starting assumptionsto deal with complex systems. The research explores the complexity science approaches inthe application of systems engineering and design. Systems engineering and designprinciples include: requirements analysis, system thinking, system lifecycles, architectureframeworks and evaluation. The tools that could be exploited from complexity scienceinclude: graph theory, agent based modelling, non-linear dynamics and information theory.The research will analyse the utility of these approaches with a view to providing anoverarching framework for the application of complexity science to systems engineering anddesign.