Engineering complexity

Abstract

Engineering systems are becoming increasingly complex as they address the challenges of the twenty-first century. However the stability of complex systems has long been difficult to determine, and may indeed represent a technological limit. Some systems are both stable and complex, but in others excessive complexity leads to collapse. Collapse may arise from a tradeoff between optimality and resilience. Recent analysis of very large complex systems shows that behind their apparent lack of order are a number of statistical patterns, which perhaps provide the much sought after pointers to system stability. Components with high levels of connectivity to the rest of a given system, and that can induce coherent behaviour across the system, can produce some spectacular collapses. These may be a special weakness introduced by global communication systems.