System transformation : the analysis of smart systems in the integrative context of risk, resilience, and sustainability

Smartness of technical and other complex systems has recently become a major topic in R&D in academia as well as in enterprises and other organisations. Manifestations of such systems are concepts of smart manufacturing (or industry 4.0), smart buildings, smart cities, smart regions, smart transport/mobility and energy systems, among others. The transformation towards such smart systems is intertwined with novel system characteristics and extended expectations on technical as well as non-technical levels. The operation of smart systems takes place in a socio-technological context along with a systemic change as already experienced by the operation of the Internet and other infrastructural systems. Requirements of these smart systems are expressed by resiliency and sustainability, which are considered to provide system stability in a changing environment, ensure safe operation (e.g. against malfunction of technical system components) and provide solutions to problems caused by unsustainable developments (e.g. overconsumption of resources and related emissions). To provide a basis to design and assess (smart) systems concerning their resilience and sustainability, methods for systemic analysis are needed. As a consequence of the different requirements of resilience and sustainability, such smart system analyses need to cover a broad spectrum from small-scale technical system entities right up to large-scale environmental and societal systems, in order to assess the ability of the systems to run in the long term. This article aims to provide basic conceptual ideas on how to integrate the different approaches of risk, resilience and sustainability. It also aims to suggest an approach for smart system analysis by integrating resilience and sustainability as main principles stabilizing systems by allowing for flexible reactions to changes. The paper identifies interfaces of methods covering different aspects important for smart system analysis. For this, the discussion starts by defining the terms risk, smart systems, resilience, and sustainability as main principles of system analysis. This differentiated definition of terms gives a first idea of the different concepts in use when analysing common and smart systems for which a description of approaches and main aspects is presented. Based on this, we identify interfaces among the basic principles of risk, resilience and sustainability and suggest an integrated approach for the analysis related to smart systems