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Using Systems Engineering Ilities to Better Understand Resiliency

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Systems Engineering in Context

Abstract

This paper examines how the systems engineering ilities, or nonfunctional attributes, of systems help to understand the concept of resiliency in engineered systems. For engineered systems, resiliency describes the ability of a system to react to and return to full function after an interruption to system operation. In some cases, the resiliency of a system may be measured in seconds, or it could be measured in years as is the case for several Department of Defense (DoD) systems this paper presents. The literature around resiliency of engineered systems provides a good definition and description for resiliency; however, it leaves an opportunity to research how to manage or achieve resiliency in a system. This work proposes an application of the ilities from the systems engineering literature to the concept of resiliency to understand how systems engineers can account for resiliency in the design process and incorporate resiliency into systems. To manage complexity and manage the nonfunctional attributes of systems, often referred to as the ilities, provide a means for systems engineers to communicate and account for these attributes that fall outside of a traditional functional decomposition for a system. Specifically, the ilities of quality, robustness, and agility assist systems engineers in understanding the components of resiliency. Additionally, the ilities of repairability, extensibility, flexibility, adaptability, and versatility provide means for systems to achieve robustness after a shock to the system. Finally, the paper presents proposed future work to continue to expand on this approach to better understand resiliency through the use of the systems engineering ilities.

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Abbreviations

t d :

Time of disruption

t d′ :

Time of degraded performance

t r :

Time of recovery

t f :

Time of future performance

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Systems Engineering, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY, USA

    James R. Enos

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  1. James R. Enos
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Correspondence to James R. Enos .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Stephen Adams

  2. Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Peter A. Beling

  3. Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    James H. Lambert

  4. Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    William T. Scherer

  5. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Cody H. Fleming

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Enos, J.R. (2019). Using Systems Engineering Ilities to Better Understand Resiliency. In: Adams, S., Beling, P., Lambert, J., Scherer, W., Fleming, C. (eds) Systems Engineering in Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00114-8_3

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