More sustainability with circular systems engineering
Sustainability is one of the topics for which systems engineers are responsible, but which is nevertheless often treated rather stepmotherly and as an afterthought. This will certainly change, as the importance of sustainability will continue to grow. That's why I've been looking for new approaches to sustainability for some time now.
The paper "Circular Systems Engineering" published in the Software and Systems Modeling Journal fills this gap. What exactly this is and how it helps in practice is discussed below.
Sustainability in systems engineering
I have already discussed sustainability in this blog Treated several times. At the TdSE 2023, it was even the Topic of the keynote. It is therefore not surprising that research is taking up the topic.
This described paper by Istvan David, Dominik Bork, Gerti Kappel deals with an innovative approach to promoting sustainability in technical systems. It introduces the concept of "circular systems engineering", a paradigm that transfers the principles of the circular economy to systems engineering. What does this mean in concrete terms?
The aim is from Circular Systems Engineering is to maintain the value of a system over all life cycles and thus minimize environmental impact and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) support.
Maximizing the value of a system is of course nothing new. What is new is that the environmental impact is also explicitly assessed.
Four dimensions: Economic, ecological, social and technical
Sustainability is described in the paper as a four-dimensional model consisting of economic, ecological, social and technical aspects. While technological systems typically meet economic and technical requirements, ecological and social dimensions are often ignored. The authors argue that a paradigm shift is necessary in order to achieve comprehensive sustainability. Systems should be designed in such a way that they not only fulfill their function, but also bear ecological and social responsibility.
Software, data and AI models are energy-intensive and have traditionally received little attention
A central concept of circular systems engineering is the preservation of value over the entire life cycle of a system. This includes both physical assets, such as raw materials and energy, and digital assets, such as software, experimental data and AI models. The utilization of digital resources is particularly important, as their development is often energy-intensive and they receive little attention in the traditional circular economy model. The authors emphasize that circular strategies, such as the reuse of software architectures and experimental data, can promote both economic and environmental sustainability
What is "twin-track sustainability"?
The paper describes two central principles: End-to-end sustainability and "bipartite sustainability". The former requires a continuous consideration of sustainability throughout the entire development process, from the initial design idea to the decommissioning of the system. Techniques such as systems thinking and multi-view modeling are proposed to manage complexity and embed sustainability in all phases. This is not really new.
Bipartite Sustainability emphasizes the need for not only the systems, but also the methods and tools used to develop them, to be sustainable. Digital technologies in particular, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, require optimization in order to minimize their high ecological costs. The paper shows how the development of energy-efficient algorithms and hardware contributes to achieving sustainable development goals.
Maturity model and development paths for circular systems engineering
The authors propose a maturity model that describes different levels of sustainability in the system development process, ranging from traditional methods that focus on quality and cost to circular systems engineering that integrates comprehensive sustainability criteria. The paths to further development include:
- Operational excellence-driven developmentFocused on optimizing the entire value creation process before introducing sustainable measures.
- Sustainability-driven development: Focuses on sustainability standards and gradually extends this to engineering processes.
- Iterative-incremental developmentBalances between end-to-end and sustainability aspects and allows flexible adjustments according to the specific requirements of the system.
I am generally a fan of maturity models, as they make it possible to measure progress. This assumes that they are lightweight and practical.
Circular systems engineering in practice
That sounds nice at first, but how can we put it into practice? One challenge is the complexity of sustainability assessment. One way to achieve this is the use of digital twinsthat map the entire life cycle of a system, interoperable models that can process data from different sources and support sustainability decisions. This brings us back to my favorite topic, MBSE.
At the moment, the paper seems to me to be suitable for supporting a rethink in companies. I doubt whether the terms "circular systems engineering" and "bipartite sustainability" will prevail. But the direction of thought is right.
