The Next Generation of Grand Challenges for Systems Engineering Research

Over the past century significant achievements in technological development have transformed human life across a diverse number of sectors (for example Aerospace & Defence, Automotive, Construction, Energy, Transportation, Consumer Electronics, IT, Pharmaceutical & Healthcare and Telecommunications). More recently, the associated systems have grown in terms of their complexity and inter-connectedness. The sheer rate of change and interdependence of these systems is now putting at risk our ability to fully understand and predict their behavior. Exploiting systems engineering and the associated tools/techniques will be crucial if we are to manage future complex systems. Systems engineering is used here, to indicate the broad area of complexity science, systems science and systems engineering, and has deliberately steered clear of a precise definition. This paper builds on an earlier proposition for establishing a set of indicative grand challenges for systems engineering research with the objective of inspiring a research agenda for the systems engineering academic/industry community. In this respect a grand challenge is recognised as being one or two decades in advance; their achievement being regarded as a major milestone or breakthrough in the advancement of knowledge or technology.