Defining Examples

CASoS is a concatenation of four sub-disciplines or study areas: Systems, Complex Systems, Complex Adaptive Systems, and Systems of Systems. "Defining" the system of interest is the first step in the CASoS Engineering Framework process. Definitions of CASoS are accomplished by addressing, at a minimum, the 7 points described below.

A Complex Adaptive System of Systems requires:

• System: A system is a set of entities, real or abstract, comprising a whole where each component interacts with or is related to at least one other component and they all serve a common objective. Any object which has no relation with any other element of the system is not part of that system.

  • Environment: The system functions within an environment. Interactions with the environment should be less complex than internal interactions and make the drawing of the boundary between them natural

• System of Systems: The system is composed of other systems (“of systems”). The other systems are natural to think of as systems in their own right, can’t be replaced by a single entity, and may be enormously complicated, or we would be dealing with a single system, rather than a system of systems.

• Complex: The system has behavior involving interrelationships among its elements and these interrelationships can yield emergent behavior that is nonlinear, of greater complexity than the sum of behaviors of its parts, not due to system complication.

• Adaptive: The system’s behavior changes in time. These changes may be within entities or their interaction, within sub-systems or their interaction, and may result in a change in the overall system’s behavior relative to its environment.

This definition of the object of analysis as an object of engineering produces the problem definition needed to articulate the Aspirations for affecting or designing the CASoS.

• Aspirations: What are the problems/opportunities/goals/questions?

• Approaches: What are the activities (e.g. observation, experiment, design, control, manipulation, modeling) that we might engage in to solve a problem, exploit an opportunity, achieve a goal, or answer a question.

• Attainability: How are approaches/aspirations rendered difficult/impossible by the fact that this is a complex adaptive system of systems?

The CASoS for which we developed prototype Defining Examples encompass many of humanity's largest problems such as Global Climate Change, Conflict End Games, and newly emerging worldwide emphases such as Large-scale Natural Disasters, pandemics, global finance, and global economic supply chains. Links to all our Defining Examples are in the right navigation panel. It is important to note that, for the purpose of the Roadmap study, we were interested in proving (and improving) our definition of CASoS and in showing that the systems meet necessary conditions for being considered CASoS. None of the Defining Examples for any system (as seen in the examples linked at right) should be considered complete in any sense; rather, the descriptions are illustrative of the kinds of considerations that should be entertained before attempting to engineer solutions within any CASoS.

We encourage you to do this on your own. A review of examples linked at right will provide a leg up for stepping through this defining process for CASoS problem spaces of interest to you.