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Boundary Resilience: A New Approach to Analyzing Behavior in Complex Systems

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dc.contributor.authorWilhelm, Julia Claire Wolfen
dc.contributor.committeechairMoreland, James Dennisen
dc.contributor.committeememberKannan, Hanumanthraoen
dc.contributor.committeememberBeling, Peter A.en
dc.contributor.committeememberFitzgerald, Riley McCreaen
dc.contributor.departmentIndustrial and Systems Engineeringen
dc.date.accessioned2024-04-30T15:57:58Zen
dc.date.available2024-04-30T15:57:58Zen
dc.date.issued2024-04-30en
dc.description.abstractSystems engineering has many subdisciplines which would be useful to study in terms of complex system behavior. However, it is the interactions between a complex system and its operating environment which drive the motivation for this analysis. Specifically, this work introduces a new approach to assessing these interactions called "boundary resilience." While classical resilience theory measures a system's internal reaction to adverse event, boundary resilience evaluates the impacts such an event may have on the surrounding environment. As the scope of this analysis is quite large, it was deemed appropriate to conduct a case study to determine the fundamental tenants of boundary resilience. SpaceX's satellite Internet mega-constellation (StarLink) was chosen due to its large potential to impact the space environment as well as its size and complexity. This study produced two boundary resilience measures, one for local boundary resilience of a single component and one for the global boundary behavior of the entire system. The local metric measures the likelihood of an adverse event occurring at that boundary location as well as its potential to impact the surrounding environment. The global boundary resilience metric reflects a nonlinear relationship among the system components.en
dc.description.abstractgeneralIt is no secret that the world and the systems which enable it to function have become increasingly complex in recent decades. This complexity has the potential to create both innovative uses as well as unplanned and unexpected behaviors in these systems. As they interact with their environment, complex systems can produce equally complex and unpredictable behaviors which have potential to have a negative impact on their environment. This work seeks to study one component of this behavior: resilience. Resilience usually measures a system's ability to continue providing a service in the event of a disruption, or to recover the ability to provide the service after some amount of time. Boundary resilience, on the other hand, takes the perspective of potential environmental damage caused by an adverse event, rather than damage to the system's functionality. This study uses a case study of the StarLink satellite constellation to examine this phenomenon. The outcome of the analysis shows that the size of a complex system negatively impacts its potential to cause damage to the surrounding environment, but increasingly mature components can mitigate this degradation.en
dc.description.degreeDoctor of Philosophyen
dc.format.mediumETDen
dc.identifier.othervt_gsexam:40122en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10919/118706en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherVirginia Techen
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/en
dc.subjectresilienceen
dc.subjectmega-constellationen
dc.subjectcomplexityen
dc.subjectemergenceen
dc.subjectboundaryen
dc.titleBoundary Resilience: A New Approach to Analyzing Behavior in Complex Systemsen
dc.typeDissertationen
thesis.degree.disciplineIndustrial and Systems Engineeringen
thesis.degree.grantorVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State Universityen
thesis.degree.leveldoctoralen
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophyen

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