Managing project complexity: A study into adapting early project phases to improve project performance in large engineering projects

Engineering projects become increasingly more complex and project complexity is assumed to be one of the causes for projects being delivered late and over budget. However, what this project complexity actually comprised of was unclear. To improve the overall project performance, this study focuses on identifying the potential causes of...

Complexity Aspects in Design for Sustainability

Anthropogenic environmental impact is growing despite large technical efforts to reduce it. Its dependency on technology induced human behaviour makes designing for environmental impact reduction particularly difficult. Despite the fact that the sustainable conundrum is characterized as a “no technical solution problem”, a framework is proposed...

Architectural Design Performance Through Computational Intelligence: A Comprehensive Decision Support Framework

Identification of design solutions for a built environment that caters to the human needs at all levels, and more specifically, to the needs of the clients and the society, is the main task addressed by architectural design. Architectural design is a prime example of a design task that is characterized by a high degree of complexity....

An inquiry into gaming simulations for decision making: From design to knowledge management

GAMING simulations (games) have been closely relatedwith systems, and particularly with systems characterised as being complex. There is a long history on the evolution of systems from simply technical and social, to socio-technical (STS) and all the way to complex (adaptive) systems (CAS). Within this ever-increasing complexity, an important...

The beauty of Unity-in-Variety: Studies on the multisensory aesthetic appreciation of product designs

This thesis embarks from the idea that aesthetic appreciation of product designs is determined by simultaneously perceiving the two partially opposing dimensions of unity and variety. People actively avoid boredom by searching for variety because it challenges the senses and offers the potential of learning new information. Hence, people browse...

Modelling Uncertainty: Developing and Using Simulation Models for Exploring the Consequences of Deep Uncertainty in Complex Problems

Simulation models are increasingly used for exploring the consequences of deep uncertainty in complex societal issues. The complexity of societal grand challenges, often characterised by the interrelatedness of different elements in the systems underlying these challenges, often renders mental simulation impossible, necessitating the use of...

What Leonardo could mean to us now: Systematic variation 21st century style, applied to large-scale societal issues

The problem: Design challenges are becoming increasingly complex, amongst others because real life is getting more complex. Society is more interconnected than before and most problems occur in a variety of -quickly changing- shapes and forms, i.e. in different contexts. These contexts pose different requirements and often have interdependencies...

Complex Adaptive Systems & Urban Morphogenesis: Analyzing and designing urban fabric informed by CAS dynamics

This dissertation builds upon research that considers how cities operate as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). It focuses on how certain characteristics of urban form can support an urban environment's capacity to self-organize, enabling emergent features to appear that, while unplanned, remain highly functional. The main thrust of the work is to...