Capability Development

Today’s highly interconnected world is filled with immense and complex challenges in the domains of national security, homeland security, intelligence, and other areas of national significance. To face these critical emerging issues, problem solvers must refrain from reductionist thinking and expand their view to account for the systemic relationship of people, policies, cultures, and governments. Maneuvering through this new awareness of a systems‑based world requires innovative approaches supported by the practice of applied systems thinking.

ASysT’s research utilizes this systems thinking approach in close partnership with a diverse set of government and industry partners. ASysT researchers bring a novel perspective to understanding and improving large-scale enterprises by integrating research from systems dynamics, systems engineering, systems architecting, enterprise management, and other related disciplines. Current research focuses on:

Resilience of Sociotechnical Systems:

Resilience denotes a system’s capacity to anticipate, absorb, adapt to, and recover from disruptions that threaten its continued operation. ASysT’s resilience research team is currently exploring resilience in sociotechnical systems, i.e.,  systems that combine hard assets with human-based processes. The team’s efforts address the definition and measurement of resilience in sociotechnical systems, particularly systems with applications relevant to U.S. national security and other select federal domains.

Governance Models for Complex Distributed Enterprises:

Defining and enhancing the governance models that quantify resilience, enterprise agility, and security is a substantial challenge. ASysT possesses the hands-on experience to characterize and overcome these challenges while also anticipating and mitigating likely cultural, attitudinal, and political clashes across a distributed enterprise.

New Systems Thinking Methods:

ASysT continues to advance the field of applied systems thinking through the development, introduction, and application of new ideas that propel the practice forward. ASysT develops and contributes original systems thinking tools, methods, and frameworks that address the impact of fundamental system changes. Additionally, ASysT analyzes the effects of changing key enterprise characteristics, including policies, personnel, cultures, products, missions, infrastructure, and the environment. These tools and the analysis they support allow decision-makers to think clearly, precisely, and quantitatively about the impact of such changes.