“Embracing complexity”

Complexity is a challenge with which all designers and engineers of complex socio-technical systems are confronted.  This challenge is key to creativity and innovation and as such needs to be embraced and not throttled.  As new materials, technologies, environmental considerations and insights emerge so does the realization that system designs need to be able to adapt during the course of their lifespan (and not only during the course of their development)  to support participation of multiple (types of) actors and potentially evolving needs and desires.  The values and mission on which a system’s design is based are crucial and leading in this process.  The need for new value-based approaches to system design and engineering are the focus of this talk.

About the Speaker: Frances Brazier

Frances Brazier chairs the Systems Engineering and Simulation Group in the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management at Delft University of Technology She holds a MSc in Mathematics and a doctorate in Cognitive Ergonomics from the VU Amsterdam. Parallel to her academic career she co-founded EurOpen and EUnet at the European level, and NLnet and NLnet Labs at the national level.

With a strong interdisciplinary background in Computer Science, AI and Design, HCI, and Systems Engineering her research focuses on value-based design (and engineering) of complex socio-technical systems, so-called participatory systems. Such systems require new design approaches that embrace and orchestrate emergence and self-organization during their life cycle. Areas of application include critical infrastructures such as distributed energy management, crisis management, and dynamic supply-demand networks, but also aircraft design and organisational design.