Complex, Costly, and Challenging: The Science of Resilient Systems

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"Complex, Costly, and Challenging: The Science of Resilient Systems " brings together a group of experts in resilience engineering to discuss this critical challenge for modern systems. The discussion begins with their perspective on why resilience is a pressing need at this point in our development. This panel explores strategies to increase resilience in modern systems, recapping successes and areas for improvement. Through case studies and theoretical frameworks, experts discuss methodologies to enhance system resilience, ensuring adaptability and robustness in the face of disruptions and challenges. From socio-technical systems to ecological networks, the discussion highlights the pivotal role of systems thinking, modeling, and simulation in addressing complexity. Participants gain insights into fostering resilience, enabling innovation, and mitigating risks in an increasingly interconnected world. The panel will conclude with a call to action for all engineers on the need to increase the resilience of our world.

A Platform of Awareness about Systems Engineering

Bringing thought leaders together from around the globe to discuss relevant content.

INCOSE is delighted that Dassault Systèmes has agreed

to be the 2024 ‘Calling All Systems’ series sponsor.

The series session was held on
Wednesday, 22nd May at 11:00am EST / UTC -4

‘Complex, Costly, and Challenging:

The Science of Resilient Systems'

This discussion is recorded and made available on The INCOSE Circuit.

Our Featured Host

Bryan Watson, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Bryan Watson, PE earned his Ph.D. at the Georgia Institute of Technology and his B.S. in Systems Engineering at the United States Naval Academy in 2009. After graduating, Bryan joined the nuclear Navy, serving as a submarine officer onboard the U.S.S Louisville and at the Naval Prototype Training Unit from 2009-2017. Following his transition from active duty, Bryan was a member of both the Computation and Advancement of Sustainable Systems Lab and at the Sustainable Design and Manufacturing lab. Bryan’s work has been published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, Journal of Mechanical Design, Reliability Engineering and Systems Safety, and IEEE’s Systems Journal. Bryan is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and a Tillman Scholar. At Embry-Riddle, Bryan leads the Biologically Inspired Design-for-Resilience Lab. Their current work is focused on the use of biologically inspired design to increase the resilience of modern systems. The goal of their work is more reliable services to users, increased user safety, and increased sustainability for connected manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure systems.

Our Featured Panelists

Michael Berkowitz, Executive Director, University of Miami's Climate Resilience Academy

Michael Berkowitz is the Executive Director of the University of Miami’s Climate Resilience Academy. He is also the Eric T. Levin Endowed Chair in Climate Resilience. The Academy is an operational unit connecting and amplifying the work the University’s 12 schools and colleges.

Previously he was a Founding Principal at Resilient Cities Catalyst, a global non-profit helping cities and their partners tackle their toughest challenges.

In August 2013, he joined the Rockefeller Foundation to shape and oversee the creation of 100 Resilient Cities (100RC). He served as the 100RC President from 2013 to 2019. The cities in the 100RC network created more than 80 holistic resilience strategies, which outlined over 4,000 concrete actions and initiatives, resulting in more than 150 collaborations between private sector and public sector to address city challenges, including $230 million of pledged support from platform partners and more than $25 billion leveraged from national, philanthropic, and private sources to implement resilience projects.

From 2005 to 2013 he worked at Deutsche Bank in a variety of risk management roles including as the global head of Operational Risk Management, where he oversaw the firm’s operational risk capital planning efforts and connected the myriad operational risk management efforts group-wide.

From 1998 until 2005, he was Deputy Commissioner at the Office of Emergency Management in New York City. He worked on planning initiatives, including the city’s Coastal Storm, Biological Terrorism and Transit Strike plans. He also responded to major incidents including the crash of American Airlines 587, the 2003 Northeast blackout, as well as the 2001 World Trade Center disaster.

David Woods, Professor Emeritus in Department of Integrated Systems Engineering at Ohio State University

David Woods (Professor Emeritus in Department of Integrated Systems Engineering at the Ohio State University; Chief Scientist, Adaptive Capacity Labs) is one of the pioneers of Resilience Engineering that looks at how people adapt to copy with complexity, across different roles and organizations. His work highlights the dangers of dramatic failures due to increasingly brittle systems, for example, through accident investigations in critical digital services, aviation, energy, critical care medicine, disaster response, military operations, and space operations (advisor to the Columbia Space Shuttle Accident Investigation Board). As a scientist, he has discovered the key ingredients that allow systems to build the potential for resilient performance and flourish despoit complexity penalties that accompany growth (his research has been cited @44K times). As a systems engineer, he shows organizations how to uncover and overcome points of brittleness and then how to build the capability for resilient performance when, inevitably, shock events occur (e.g., awards from Aviation Week and Space Technology, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society). His books include Behind Human Error, Resilience Engineering (the 1st book in the field), Resilience Engineering in Practice, Joint Cognitive Systems. He started the SNAFU Catchers Consortium,, a software industry-university partnership to apply the new science to build resilience in critical digital services (see stella.report). He is Past-President of the Human factors and Ergonomics Society. He is frequently asked for advise by many government agencies, and companies, both domestically and aboard (e.g., DoD, NASA, FAA, loM; Air France, TNO, IBM; UK MOD, NHS, Haute Authorite de Sante).

Brian Haan, Director of Model Based Systems Engineering & Simulation Process Data Management Process Consulting, DASSAULT SYSTEMES

Brian Haan has 30 years of Systems Engineering and Systems Engineering Management experience. His first notable application of MBSE methodologies reaches back nearly 20 years where he led the development of MBSE models to understand the interplay of system reliability and system security requirements for a particular system. That activity seeded a career where he often exercised a specialization in modeling and simulation of adversarial resilience to identify and develop requirements to address how missions, systems, and organizations could withstand, adapt, and recover from adversarial disruption or attacks. The common objective of modeling adversarial resilience was to identify vulnerabilities, implement safeguards, and to proactively develop mitigation and response strategies to an adversary that both learns and adapts. Today, he serves as Director of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and Simulation Process Data Management (SPDM) Process Consulting for Dassault Systemes where his responsibility is to help clients experience the value of MBSE, SPDM, and their integration in the development of complex systems

Calling All Systems