Scott JacksonBurnham Systems Consulting · Systems Engineering
Scott Jackson
MS, PhD
About
152
Publications
195,336
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1,902
Citations
Introduction
Research into how to introduce resilience into an engineered system.
Additional affiliations
January 2014 - January 2016
Independent Researcher
Position
- Princioal Engineer
September 2000 - May 2009
Position
- Lecturer
Description
- Taught graduate level courses in Systems Engineering and Systems Architecting
January 1994 - June 2006
Position
- Senior Systems Engineer
Description
- Advised engineering departments on Systems Engineering principles and processes
Education
September 1963 - January 1966
September 1953 - August 1957
Publications
Publications (152)
This work presents the case for the affordability of systems. These cases include transportation, such as commercial aircraft and railway systems. space shuttle, power power generation systems. Case studies are presented for each of these categories showing cost to system modification ranging from no cost to moderate cost. Case studies include syst...
There are two ways the interactions of the elements, or parts, of a system are important. First, interactions are a basic part of the definition of a system. This chapter discusses the many roles that interactions may play in the system. Among these roles is a mechanism for the system to achieve its role as a system, namely its purpose, which is th...
Systems engineering (SE) is a transdisciplinary discipline that links all the engineering disciplines involved in defining a system throughout its lifecycle. As such, SE involves heuristics to a significant extent. A heuristic relates to a formulation based on experts' experience serving as a guide in the investigation or solution of a problem. To...
p>Shows that complex systems can be described as holistic. Methodology is analytical. Shows relevance to the analysis of failed systems. </p
The issue in dealing with earthquakes, such as those recently experienced in Turkey and Syria, is that there is a short-term plan but no long-term plan. The short-term plan calls for immediate search and rescue operations to save as many survivors as possible from the ruins of the collapsed buildings. This plan is well underway. However, a long-ter...
This research note presents an approach to assure that a system meets the basic property of holism. Holism is the principle that the whole is different from, and may be greater than, the sum of its rationally separable parts. This approach suggested in this research note focuses on the functions of the system and on the parts of the system. The app...
This errata documents some changes in terminology in the original thesis of 2016.
Among the most advanced concepts in the twenty-first century is systems science. The principles of systems science can be used to describe any large scale and complex systems such as offshore platforms, their design, their management, and their operation. The premise of systems science is that the entire system and the associated organization is a...
This paper explores leadership roles on systems engineering projects with a focus on two primary influencing factors: authority and expertise. The paper makes the case that differences in rules, either written or understood, exist between systems engineering expertise and the authority that is the basis for most organizations. In most organizations...
This chapter examines how human-created systems in civil and organizational domains maintain their required capability to function effectively in the face of adversity and identifies the factors that enable these systems to remain resilient. Typical civil systems include power grid systems and transportation systems, such as aircraft. Organizationa...
This file adds data that shows the relation between resilience techniques and system attributes that reflect the techniques used to define the system.
This article discusses the concept of siloism in the context of LDSE projects and ways to mitigate that effect. Siloism is the unwillingness of members of any project team to share information especially with respect to mitigating conflicts and overlaps among specialties on the project. Failure to mitigate siloism has the potential for reducing the...
This article discusses the siloism concept in LDSE and the use of the integrated product team (IPT) concept to mitigate it. Siloism is any project team member's unwillingness to share information especially to mitigate conflicts and overlaps among project specialties. Failure to mitigate siloism potentially reduces the entire project's effectivenes...
(3-2) This chapter explains the essential characteristics of a system, why an aircraft along with associated systems qualifies as a system, types of systems and how they ae viewed (worldviews), how all of these concepts are part of systems science, and the nature of derivative concepts including systems thinking, the systems approach, and systems e...
Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSs) are used in information, computer and system sciences to organize terms and concepts in a domain. In Systems Engineering, taxonomy is apparently the KOS of choice with system resilience taxonomy provided by the Jackson & Ferris, for civil industries; and the MITRE for military industry taxonomies developed in 2...
This paper explores abstract, also called conceptual, systems consisting of elements, or parts, which are abstract principles. Systems can be real, abstract, or a combination of the two. Systems of interest, in general, are for the most part, physical systems. However, his paper examines the concept that a set of principles constitutes another type...
Emergence is the property of a system that cannot be determined by the examination of a single part of that system. Emergence results from the interaction of two or more parts of the system. Resilience is an example of an emergent property in an engineered system. Resilience is that emergent property that enables a system to maintain its capability...
Abstractions are a basic concept in systems science
A previously developed model allows the analyst to review the stepwise degradation in capability during an encounter with an adversity, and an eventual to a capability specified by the system owner. The model allows the system to transition through four groups: Group 1 allows the system to withstand the adversity to a given level of capability; the...
This paper identifies methods to mitigate the risks of organizational accidents, accidents which involve many people operating at different levels of an organization. This paper defines organizational biases which are the factors that affect decisions in an organizational context. Decision architectures are the collections of decisions for mitigati...
This article is a collection of thoughts based on conversations and readings. The main idea is that systems engineering (SE) is viewed from three perspectives among seasoned practitioners. The central focus is that SE is not “another branch of engineering”, but rather SE provides generic principles applicable to all engineering disciplines, and eve...
The primary purposes of this essay are (1) to explore how issues of importance can gain maximum visibility and acceptance, and (2) to show that the phenomenon of cognitive bias is very important, due to the catastrophes that have occurred as a result of the lack of understanding of it.
I do not claim to have made any significant scientific discover...
The state model previously documented in, for example, (Jackson, Cook, and Ferris 2015) shows how a system encountering an adversity passes through a number of states from normal operation to either a decommissioned state or total recovery. This paper shows that this model can be used as the basis for a Markov analysis which is a stochastic model u...
New INCOSE web and technical report content for updated definitions of Systems Engineering and System. The output of two years' work by the INCOSE Fellows' Working group July 2016 - January 2019.
All outputs freely available on INCOSE website here:
https://www.incose.org/about-systems-engineering/system-and-se-definition
This presentation was given to the Brazil chapter of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) in February of 2019. The presentation is in video format and the link is part of the file.
Experts in many domains are studying the concept of resilience, that is, the ability of a system to maintain required capability in the face of an adversity. The purpose of the paper is to explore how resilience related considerations vary among different application domains. Domains examined include civil systems, military systems, cyber space, na...
The definition and characteristics of system have eluded humans for a very long time, as different people refer to the concept of system in various ways. A set of surveys conducted by us revealed seven distinct worldviews on system. We describe the surveys, analyze their results, and comment on differences between the responses. Based on the outcom...
There are things happening in the world of psychology that may affect the way decision management is viewed and practiced. Some of them are not intuitive. What sent this development into action was the awarding of the Nobel prize to two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler. Kahneman’s surprise finding described in (Kahneman 2011, 411)...
This presentation summarizes findings on cognitive bias and decision making in public and personal research
INCOSE's definition of systems engineering was compared to the aspirations set out in the INCOSE Systems Engineering Vision 2025 for systems engineering as it ought to be to address modern challenges. Doing this led us to three fundamental realisations. First, while “20th century systems” were, for the most part, “deterministic” or nearly so, 21st...
We envision that systems engineering can be transformed into a truly transdisciplinary discipline ‐ a foundational meta‐discipline that supports and enables collaboration between all the disciplines that should be involved in conceiving, building, using and evolving a system such that it will continue to be successful and fit for purpose as time pa...
In order to characterize dysfunction in the execution of the Systems Engineering (SE) process in a more methodical and systematic way, the Systems Science concept of Systems Pathology is extended to Systems Engineering Pathology. Poor SE execution can be due to inadequate execution, insufficient budgets, deficient interfacing, and other factors. Th...
We take the position that an engineered system is a means to enable user capability that provides value to stakeholders and address the question of the fundamental nature of resilience of engineered systems. Therefore, resilience is concerned with the behavior of the system in the face of a disruption, in particular emphasizing the management, thro...
In 2016, INCOSE leadership asked the INCOSE Fellows to initiate a study to compare the current INCOSE definition of Systems Engineering (SE) with the aspirations set out in the SE Vision 2025. The SE Fellows Definition Committee created a SE Worldviews survey to investigate current perceptions of INCOSE members. Analysis of Results for the Systems...
The System Definition Survey issued to INCOSE Fellows in December 2016 revealed at least five radically distinct worldviews on Systems within a relatively small, but moderately representative, part of the INCOSE community. We describe and analyse the survey results, and comment on differences between the responses from the Fellows and the responses...
We envision that Systems Engineering (SE) can be transformed into a truly transdisciplinary discipline – a foundational meta‐discipline that supports and enables collaboration between all the disciplines that should be involved in conceiving, building, using and evolving a system so that it will continue to be successful and fit for purpose as time...
INCOSE's definition of SE was compared to the aspirations set out in SE Vision 2025 for SE as it ought to be to address modern challenges. Doing this led us to three fundamental realisations. First, while “20th century systems” were, for the most part, “deterministic” or nearly so, 21st century systems are on the other hand increasingly non‐determi...
We envision that Systems Engineering (SE) can be transformed into a truly transdisciplinary discipline-a foundational meta-discipline that supports and enables collaboration between all the disciplines that should be involved in conceiving, building, using and evolving a system so that it will continue to be successful and fit for purpose as time p...
The System Definition Survey issued to INCOSE Fellows in December 2016 revealed at
least five radically distinct worldviews on Systems within a relatively small, but moderately representative, part of the INCOSE community. We describe and analyse the survey results, and comment on differences between the responses from the Fellows and the responses...
INCOSE's definition of SE was compared to the aspirations set out in SE Vision 2025 for SE as it ought to be to address modern challenges. Doing this led us to three fundamental realisations. First, while "20 th century systems" were, for the most part, "deterministic" or nearly so, 21 st century systems are on the other hand increasingly non-deter...
This paper examines cognitive biases which affect the ability of decision makers to make rational decisions in an organizational context. The motivation for this analysis begins with the observation of catastrophic accidents caused by human error but in an organizational context. This paper expands on the concept of cognitive bias to define organiz...
This report is a collection of works prepared by the author over several years in his work in systems engineering for commercial aircraft. This report can be considered a companion document to the book Systems Engineering for Commercial Aircraft – A Domain-Specific Adaptation, Second Edition, published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd in 2015.
Psychological factors are the root causes of many disasters but are underemphasized in the systems engineering literature. The tacit premise is that decision makers are rational, that is, they will make decisions based on facts.
Cognitive Bias is the Root Cause of Irrational Decisions. In psychology the phenomenon that causes irrational decisions...
Systems engineering is conventionally defined as a multidisciplinary approach to the realization of successful systems. There is opportunity to further strengthen and improve the practice of systems engineering by increasing the use of cognitive sciences analysis in the practice of systems engineering. The goal of this paper is facilitate this impr...
Over the past decades, a common definition of the term system has eluded researchers and practitioners alike. We reviewed over 100 current and historical definitions of system in an effort to understand perspectives and to propose the most comprehensive definition of this term. There is much common ground in different families of definition of syst...
Over the past decades, a common definition of the term system has eluded researchers and practitioners alike. We reviewed over 100 current and historical definitions of system in an effort to understand perspectives and to propose the most comprehensive definition of this term. There is much common ground in different families of definition of syst...
This paper reviews lessons pertaining to the New York infrastructure from various sources including the 9/11 Commission report from a resilience point of view. These lessons are recorded as recommendations or as concerns. Implementation requires actions by the federal, state, and local governments. Some have been implemented; some have been relegat...
This chapter describes a method to approach the design of systems to ensure resilience. The state machine model describes a set of states in which a system may be situated and a set of transitions between those states which represent the response of the system to either events of threat applied to the system or restorative, maintenance or managemen...
This chapter relates results pertaining to the resilience of engineered systems in four specific domains: fire protection, aviation, rail, and power distribution. The results documents proposed solutions by experts in each domain as to concrete solutions that in their opinion would have diminished or prevented the damage that actually occurred duri...
A set of 34 principles which can be used to enhance the resilience of engineered systems have been described in the literature. This research investigated the evidence for the appropriateness and completeness of this set of principles using the results of official investigations of accidents representative of a range of engineering applications and...
In the context of engineered design, according to the International Council on Systems Engineering (2015) resilience is “the ability to provide required capability in the face of adversity”. Resilience is somewhat different from risk. While risk pertains to the loss of value due to uncertain future events, resilience has to do with designing a syst...
The purpose of this essay is to show that the concept of the resilience of an engineered system is in agreement with the concept of sustainable value. The INCOSE Resilient Systems website (INCOSE 2015) defines the resilience of an engineered system as “the ability to provide required capability in the face of adversity. Similarly sustainable value...
These charts show that quality commercial aircraft systems can only be developed if their procurement specs are complete and rigorously developed. To to this flow down from aircraft level requirements is needed both in a holistic path and a reductionist path.
This presentation shows how changes made to the New York infrastructure following 9/11 have improved resilince and in some cases are still waiting to the implemented. Most notably, the implementation of a single-frequency first responder communication system took almost 14 years and action from the fedteral government.
The purpose of this paper is to show that solutions realised during crisis environments qualify as valid solutions of resilient systems. These systems, created by first responders and other on-site personnel in the heat of a disaster environment, come into existence through a series of stages of creation that have been observed in case studies. The...
This paper shows that the procurement specification is the focal point of requirements development for most aircraft systems. It is axiomatic that quality supplier products cannot be achieved without quality specifications. Furthermore, quality requirements between aircraft elements assure the stability of the supply chain system of systems. For th...
Scholars have focused on two primary characteristics that reflect the complexity of a system: the structure of the system and in the variability in the relationships between the elements. This paper discusses both aspects of the system and shows that they can be treated separately during development to reduce complexity. The first part treats the s...
This paper arose from the challenges inherent in defining and specifying the complicated, non-functional system characteristic of resilience in the presence of competing definitions. The approach adopted is to specify the resilience of a system using a state-machine. In this class of model, the state of the system is modelled by the states, the thr...
Regional jet developers, like those for mainline jets, must strive to meet the needs of their customers while complying with rigid regulatory requirements. To meet these goals, developers face demands that require judicious adaptation of selected core systems engineering processes to this domain. These demands result from a more severe life cycle e...
No abstract is available for this article.
System resilience means different things to different people and different things across different industries and system contexts. For example, in some contexts, the need is for the system performance to be unaffected after the occurrence of a defined threat event whereas in others system impairment or even loss may be acceptable, particularly for...
This paper reviews two perspectives of the concept of resilience found in the literature. The traditional perspective found in the fields of ecology, psychology, and materials science views resilience as a reactive quality pertaining to the encounter with a disturbance and for the period following the disturbance. Researchers studying engineered sy...
The key principle of systems engineering is that an aircraft should be considered as a whole and not as a collection of parts. Another principle is that the requirements for the aircraft and its subsystems emanate from a logical set of organized functions and from economic or customer-oriented requirements as well as the regulatory requirements for...
This paper stresses the importance of the System Engineering (SE) process in the contractor funded R&D phase of a project. This practice, first, permits major decisions to be made before extensive resources are committed to hardware and software designs. Secondly, it directs R&D efforts for following years. Finally, it saves money by concentrating...
Questions
Questions (6)
Tatania, if you are looking for interesting topics to discuss, I suggest the following:
(1) Cognitive bias
(2) Risk denial
(3) Transdisciplinary
(4) Holism
I have received a notice of copyright infringement. Please send me a summary of the items for which a copyright infringement has been alleged?
It is not clear from your website whether ResearchGate constitutes a preprint data base or whether individual preprint articles need to be stored in another preprint data base before being uploaded to ResearcgGate.
From time to time I receive messages from RG asking me to confirm that I wrote certain papers. Some of these paper are already in my profile. If I answer yes, the RG inserts a second copy of the paper in the profile and I am forced to delete it. Why is this necessary? So my practice now is just to ignore the questions. Is this reasonable? A better solution is for RG not to ask me to reconfirm papers that are already in my profile. Reasonable?
Jill, there are no copyright or other impediments to uploading your resilience taxonomy paper to RG. Or you can just send it to me at jackson@burnhamsystems.net.
The systems of interest are for the most part infrastructure systems. The principles for achieving resilience can be found in the paper Jackson and Ferris (2013) in the journal Systems Engineering.
