A resilience assessment framework for complex engineered systems using graphical evaluation and review technique (GERT)

System resilience characterizes the capability of maintaining the required functionality under disruptions, which is of great significance in evaluating the productivity and safety of complex engineered systems. Although most studies conduct resilience assessment from qualitative and quantitative perspectives, system functionality that reflects...

The epsilon-knowledge:: An emerging complement of Machlup’s types of disciplinary knowledge

Machlup, F. used the words alpha, beta, and gamma to identify humanities, science, and social science as three distinct fields of academic learning and knowing, in addition to general knowledge. Gilles, W. and Paquet, G. identified a fourth type of disciplinary knowledge and labelled it as delta. This includes the knowledge of creative...

The epsilon-knowledge: an emerging complement of Machlup's types of disciplinary knowledge

Machlup used the words alpha, beta, and gamma to identify humanities, science, and social science as three distinct fields of academic learning and knowing, in addition to general knowledge. Gilles and Paquet identified a fourth type of disciplinary knowledge and labeled it as delta. This includes the knowledge of creative disciplines such as...

Engineering Systems Design: A Look to the Future

Engineering Systems Design is an emerging perspective with a growing community. The preceding chapters in the Handbook of Engineering Systems Design presented the engineering systems perspective, models for describing and methods for designing interventions in engineering systems, as well as reflections on the use of those methods and upcoming...

Risk, Uncertainty, and Ignorance in Engineering Systems Design

Uncertainty is the third major perspective in understanding and designing engineering systems, along with complexity and human behaviour. Risk, a corollary of uncertainty, is understood as the effect of uncertainty on objectives. When designing engineering systems, you cannot not manage risk - even ignoring risk equates to a decision to accept...

Engineering Systems in Flux: Designing and Evaluating Interventions in Dynamic Systems

This chapter discusses the threefold challenge of designing effective interventions in engineering systems that are constantly changing: (1) a designed socio-technical artefact should improve system performance not only under present conditions, but it must also be functional when conditions change, be it autonomously or due to interventions...

Conditions for Profitability & Grid Effects of PV-Electrolysis

In this graduation research conditions affecting the profitability as well as the grid effects of a PV-Electrolysis system have been studied using the site of PV park Oosterwolde as a case study. During the study a wide variety scenarios have been created from a set of influential parameters on the PV-Electrolysis business case, which have...

Asking Effective Questions: Awareness of Bias in Designerly Thinking

The formulation of questions in processes of design is an activity affected by cognitive biases inherent to humans. Cognitive biases, developed through gaining experience, influence how decisions are made during problem solving. When an outcome is predictable, experience provides mental shortcuts or heuristics to enable the problem solver to act...

Past, Present and Future of Behaviourally Adaptive Engineered Systems

System and Actor Perspectives on Sociotechnical Systems

This paper addresses the complexity of analyzing and designing sociotechnical systems: systems that involve both complex physical-technical systems and networks of interdependent actors. It is shown that, although a hard system perspective and an actor perspective differ greatly in terms of terminology, methods, and applicability, they also show...

The Brittleness of Unbundled Train Systems: Crumbling Operational Coping Strategies

This paper reports on the current status of the restructured Dutch rail sector. We empirically studied the strategies traffic controllers display to cope with daily value-conflicts in rail operations, at infrastructure manager ProRail and train operating company NS. We use a new framework to identify types of coping behavior. The findings are...