History of Engineering Systems Design Research and Practice

Abstract

This chapter reviews developments in engineering systems design from antiquity to the present day, noting especially the continual increase in recent years in the sophistication and interconnectedness of engineered artefacts, and development, from the late nineteenth century, of vast networks for energy, communications, and transportation. Large projects required enormous engineering effort from substantial and often distributed teams, while the networks that developed were “partially designed, partially evolved” with their design and configuration influenced by global actors. These engineering developments led to the need for new tools, methods, and approaches to support engineers in their work, and these are reviewed, beginning with the introduction of drawings – measured plans – and developing through design methods to systems engineering and project management in the latter part of the twentieth century. Concurrently, there was the emergence in the scientific community of the notion of a system, which led to new scientific studies, from systems analysis and cybernetics to network science and soft systems methodology. These various strands have come together at the beginning of the twenty-first century to a multifaceted present state, in which many different lines of research and practice may be brought to bear on the engineering systems design challenges of the century, of complex systems of systems, and their interaction with an increasingly overburdened natural world.