Engineering Systems: Meeting Human Needs in a Complex Technological World

An overview of engineering systems that describes the new challenges posed for twenty-first-century engineers by todays highly complex sociotechnical systems. Engineering for much of the twentieth century was mainly about artifacts and inventions. Now its increasingly about complex systems. As the airplane taxis to the gate you access the Internet and check email with your PDA linking the communication and transportation systems. At home you recharge your plug-in hybrid vehicle linking transportation to the electricity grid. Todays large-scale highly complex sociotechnical systems converge interact and depend on each other in ways engineers of old could barely have imagined. As scale scope and complexity increase engineers consider technical and social issues together in a highly integrated way as they design flexible adaptable robust systems that can be easily modified and reconfigured to satisfy changing requirements and new technological opportunities. Engineering Systems offers a comprehensive examination of such systems and the associated emerging field of study. Through scholarly discussion concrete examples and history the authors consider the engineers changing role new ways to model and analyze these systems the impacts on engineering education and the future challenges of meeting human needs through the technologically enabled systems of today and tomorrow.