SMART SYSTEMS
SYSTEM TRANSFORMATION:
THE ANALYSIS OF SMART SYSTEMS IN THE INTEGRATIVE CONTEXT OF RISK, RESILIENCE, AND SUSTAINABILITY By Merja Hoppe and Ralf Mock, Institute of Sustainable Development Zurich University of Applied Sciences merja.hoppe@zhaw.ch and ralf.mock@zhaw.ch INTRODUCTION Smartness of technical and other complex systems has recently become a major topic in R&D in academia as well as in enterprises and other organisations. Manifestations of such systems are concepts of smart manufacturing (or industry 4.0), smart buildings, smart cities, smart regions, smart transport/mobility and energy systems, among others. The transformation towards such smart systems is intertwined with novel system characteristics and extended expectations on technical as well as non-technical levels. The operation of smart systems takes place in a socio-technological context along with a systemic change as already experienced by the operation of the Internet and other
infrastructural systems. Requirements of these smart systems are expressed by resiliency and sustainability, which are considered to provide system stability in a changing environment, ensure safe operation (e.g. against malfunction of technical system components) and provide solutions to problems caused by unsustainable developments (e.g. overconsumption of resources and related emissions). To provide a basis to design and assess (smart) systems concerning their resilience and sustainability, methods for systemic analysis are needed. As a consequence of the different requirements of resilience and sustainability, such smart system analyses need to cover a broad spectrum from small-scale technical criticalinfrastructureprotectionreview.com
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