Perspectives on Complex Global Challenges
Education, Energy, Healthcare, Security, and Resilience
by Elisabeth Pate-Cornell
Part of the Stevens Institute Series on Complex Systems and Enterprises series
Examines current and prospective challenges surrounding global challenges of education, energy, healthcare, security, and resilience.
This book discusses issues in large-scale systems in the United States and around the world. The authors examine the challenges of education, energy, healthcare, national security, and urban resilience. The book covers challenges in education including America's use of educational funds, standardized testing, and the use of classroom technology. On the topic of energy, this book examines debates on climate, the current and future developments of the nuclear power industry, the benefits and cost decline of natural gases, and the promise of renewable energy. The authors also discuss national security, focusing on the issues of nuclear weapons, terrorism and cyber security. Urban resilience is addressed in the context of natural threats such as hurricanes and floods.
• Studies the usage of a globalized benchmark for both student and pedagogical performance
• Covers topics such as surveillance, operational capabilities, movement of resources, and the pros and cons of globalization
• Examines big data, evolving medical methodologies and effects on the medical educational curriculum, and the positive effects of electronic records in healthcare data
“Perspectives on Complex Global Challenges: Education, Energy Healthcare, Security, and Resilience” serves as a reference for government officials, personnel in security, business executives and system engineers.
Emergent Behavior in Complex Systems Engineering
A Modeling and Simulation Approach
Part of the Stevens Institute Series on Complex Systems and Enterprises series
A comprehensive text that reviews the methods and technologies that explore emergent behavior in complex systems engineering in multidisciplinary fields.
In “Emergent Behavior in Complex Systems Engineering”, the authors present the theoretical considerations and the tools required to enable the study of emergent behaviors in manmade systems. Information Technology is key to today's modern world. Scientific theories introduced in the last five decades can now be realized with the latest computational infrastructure. Modeling and simulation, along with Big Data technologies are at the forefront of such exploration and investigation.
The text offers a number of simulation-based methods, technologies, and approaches that are designed to encourage the reader to incorporate simulation technologies to further their understanding of emergent behavior in complex systems. The authors present a resource for those designing, developing, managing, operating, and maintaining systems, including system of systems. The guide is designed to help better detect, analyse, understand, and manage the emergent behaviour inherent in complex systems engineering in order to reap the benefits of innovations and avoid the dangers of unforeseen consequences. This vital resource:
• Presents coverage of a wide range of simulation technologies
• Explores the subject of emergence through the lens of Modeling and Simulation (M&S)
• Offers contributions from authors at the forefront of various related disciplines such as philosophy, science, engineering, sociology, and economics
• Contains information on the next generation of complex systems engineering
Written for researchers, lecturers, and students, Emergent Behavior in Complex Systems Engineering provides an overview of the current discussions on complexity and emergence and shows how systems engineering methods in general and simulation methods in particular can help in gaining new insights in complex systems engineering.
Complexity Challenges in Cyber Physical Systems
Using Modeling and Simulation (M&S) to Support Intelligence, Adaptation and Autonomy
Part of the Stevens Institute Series on Complex Systems and Enterprises series
Offers a one-stop reference on the application of advanced modeling and simulation (M&S) in cyber physical systems (CPS) engineering.
This book provides the state-of-the-art in methods and technologies that aim to elaborate on the modeling and simulation support to cyber physical systems (CPS) engineering across many sectors such as healthcare, smart grid, or smart home. It presents a compilation of simulation-based methods, technologies, and approaches that encourage the reader to incorporate simulation technologies in their CPS engineering endeavors, supporting management of complexity challenges in such endeavors.
“Complexity Challenges in Cyber Physical Systems: Using Modeling and Simulation (M&S) to Support Intelligence, Adaptation and Autonomy” is laid out in four sections. The first section provides an overview of complexities associated with the application of M&S to CPS Engineering. It discusses M&S in the context of autonomous systems involvement within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The second section provides a more detailed description of the challenges in applying modeling to the operation, risk and design of holistic CPS. The third section delves in details of simulation support to CPS engineering followed by the engineering practices to incorporate the cyber element to build resilient CPS sociotechnical systems. Finally, the fourth section presents a research agenda for handling complexity in application of M&S for CPS engineering. In addition, this text:
• Introduces a unifying framework for hierarchical co-simulations of cyber physical systems (CPS)
• Provides understanding of the cycle of macro-level behavior dynamically arising from spaciotemporal interactions between parts at the micro-level
• Describes a simulation platform for characterizing resilience of CPS
“Complexity Challenges in Cyber Physical Systems” has been written for researchers, practitioners, lecturers, and graduate students in computer engineering who want to learn all about M&S support to addressing complexity in CPS and its applications in today's and tomorrow's world.
Modeling and Visualization of Complex Systems and Enterprises
Explorations of Physical, Human, Economic, and Social Phenomena
Part of the Stevens Institute Series on Complex Systems and Enterprises series
Explains multi-level models of enterprise systems and covers modeling methodology
This book addresses the essential phenomena underlying the overall behaviors of complex systems and enterprises. Understanding these phenomena can enable improving these systems. These phenomena range from physical, behavioral, and organizational, to economic and social, all of which involve significant human components. Specific phenomena of interest and how they are represented depend on the questions of interest and the relevant domains or contexts. Modeling and Visualization of Complex Systems and Enterprises examines visualization of phenomena and how understanding the relationships among phenomena can provide the basis for understanding where deeper exploration is warranted. The author also reviews mathematical and computational models, defined very broadly across disciplines, which can enable deeper understanding.
• Presents a 10-step methodology for addressing questions associated with the design or operation of complex systems and enterprises
• Examines six archetypal enterprise problems including two from healthcare, two from urban systems, and one each from financial systems and defense systems
• Provides an introduction to the nature of complex systems, historical perspectives on complexity and complex adaptive systems, and the evolution of systems practice
Modeling and Visualization of Complex Systems and Enterprises is written for graduate students studying systems science and engineering and professionals involved in systems science and engineering, those involved in complex systems such as healthcare delivery, urban systems, sustainable energy, financial systems, and national security.
Social-Behavioral Modeling for Complex Systems
Part of the Stevens Institute Series on Complex Systems and Enterprises series
This volume describes frontiers in social-behavioral modeling for contexts as diverse as national security, health, and on-line social gaming. Recent scientific and technological advances have created exciting opportunities for such improvements. However, the book also identifies crucial scientific, ethical, and cultural challenges to be met if social-behavioral modeling is to achieve its potential. Doing so will require new methods, data sources, and technology. The volume discusses these, including those needed to achieve and maintain high standards of ethics and privacy. The result should be a new generation of modeling that will advance science and, separately, aid decision-making on major social and security-related subjects despite the myriad uncertainties and complexities of social phenomena.
Intended to be relatively comprehensive in scope, the volume balances theory-driven, data-driven, and hybrid approaches. The latter may be rapidly iterative, as when artificial-intelligence methods are coupled with theory-driven insights to build models that are sound, comprehensible and usable in new situations.
With the intent of being a milestone document that sketches a research agenda for the next decade, the volume draws on the wisdom, ideas and suggestions of many noted researchers who draw in turn from anthropology, communications, complexity science, computer science, defense planning, economics, engineering, health systems, medicine, neuroscience, physics, political science, psychology, public policy and sociology.
In brief, the volume discusses:
• Cutting-edge challenges and opportunities in modeling for social and behavioral science
• Special requirements for achieving high standards of privacy and ethics
• New approaches for developing theory while exploiting both empirical and computational data
• Issues of reproducibility, communication, explanation, and validation
• Special requirements for models intended to inform decision making about complex social systems
Healthcare System Access
Measurement, Inference, and Intervention
Part of the Stevens Institute Series on Complex Systems and Enterprises series
A guide to a holistic approach to healthcare measurement aimed at improving access and outcomes.
“Healthcare System Access” is an important resource that bridges two areas of research-access modeling and healthcare system engineering. The book's mathematical modeling approach highlights fundamental approaches on measurement of and inference on healthcare access. This mathematical modeling facilitates translating data into knowledge in order to make data-driven estimates and projections about parameters, patterns, and trends in the system. The complementary engineering approach uses estimates and projections about the system to better inform efforts to design systems that will yield better outcomes.
The author-a noted expert on the topic-offers an in-depth exploration of the concepts of systematic disparities, reviews measures for systematic disparities, and presents a statistical framework for making inference on disparities with application to disparities in access. The book also includes information health outcomes in the context of prevention and chronic disease management. In addition, this text:
• Integrates data and knowledge from various fields to provide a framework for decision making in transforming access to healthcare
• Provides in-depth material including illustrations of how to use state-of-art methodology, large data sources, and research from various fields
• Includes end-of-chapter case studies for applying concepts to real-world conditions
Written for health systems engineers, “Healthcare System Access: Measurement, Inference, and Intervention” puts the focus on approaches to measure healthcare access and addresses important enablers of such change in healthcare towards improving access and outcomes.
Universities as Complex Enterprises
How Academia Works, Why It Works These Ways, and Where the University Enterprise Is Headed
Part of the Stevens Institute Series on Complex Systems and Enterprises series
Explores the nature of academic enterprises, including why they work the way they do and where such enterprises are headed, with the goal of gaining insights into where change can and will happen.
This book looks at universities from a whole-enterprise perspective. It explores the steady escalation of the costs of higher education and uses a computational economic model of complex academic enterprises. This model includes component models of research, teaching, administration, and brand value. Understanding the relationships among practices, processes, structure, and ecosystem provides the basis for transforming academia, leveraging its strengths and overcoming its limitations. More specifically, this architecture helps the reader understand how various elements of the enterprise system either enable or hinder other elements of the system, all of which are embedded in a complex behavioral and social ecosystem. Each topic is explored in terms of the levels of the architecture at which it primarily functions. Levers of change within each area are discussed, using many experiences of pursuing such issues in a range of academic enterprises.
• Provides a new methodology by taking a more systems-oriented approach to education systems as a whole
• Shows how various elements of the enterprise system either enable or hinder other elements of the system
• Offers alternative strategies for transformation of academic enterprises
“Universities as Complex Enterprises: How Academia Works, Why It Works These Ways, and Where the University Enterprise Is Headed” is a reference for systems scientists and engineers, economists, social scientists, and decision makers.
Modeling Human–System Interaction
Philosophical and Methodological Considerations, With Examples
Part of the Stevens Institute Series on Complex Systems and Enterprises series
This book presents theories and models to examine how humans interact with complex automated systems, including both empirical and theoretical methods.
• Provides examples of models appropriate to the four stages of human-system interaction
• Examines in detail the philosophical underpinnings and assumptions of modeling
• Discusses how a model fits into "doing science" and the considerations in garnering evidence and arriving at beliefs for the modeled phenomena
“Modeling Human-System Interaction” is a reference for professionals in industry, academia and government who are researching, designing and implementing human-technology systems in transportation, communication, manufacturing, energy, and health care sectors.