Transdisciplinary Systems Engineering Approaches

Transdisciplinary systems engineering provides new ways of thinking when developing engineering solutions to complex systems problems. The solution space afforded through the use of transdisciplinary approach tends to be broader than that achievable with traditional approaches. This expanded solution space is a result of new ways of thinking enabled by exploiting disciplinary convergence. A shift to transdisciplinary systems engineering requires a shift in the approaches and tools needed to engineer complex systems. These changes in systems approaches include models that can capture transdisciplinary concepts, inclusion of expansive meta-data in transdisciplinary models, and application of nontraditional engineering methods to explore concepts and outcomes. As engineering takes on the challenges of increasingly more complex systems with different levels of autonomy, we believe that transdisciplinary approaches will enable the realization of more complete solutions for such systems and enable the complexity necessary for these systems. This paper presents specific approaches within the rubric of transdisciplinary systems engineering.