Technical briefings: How can we tackle the shifting challenges of complex systems?

The second in the series of technical briefings saw Professor Roger Kemp MBE FREng, Professor Emeritus at Lancaster University, and Danielle Antonellis, Founder and Executive Director at Kindling, talk about the challenges of ensuring the safety and resilience of complex systems and introduce how the Safer Complex Systems mission is addressing the problem. The event was chaired by Dame Judith Hackitt DBE FREng, Chair of Make UK.  

What are complex systems? 

Complex systems play an increasingly important part in people’s lives and the list of complex systems is long and continually growing. For example: 

• supply chains provide fresh food from around the world to local supermarkets 
• power systems extract energy from wind, sunshine, tides, biomass, and fossil fuels, and make it available 24/7 in our homes 

• healthcare systems link frontline staff with pharmaceutical research, PPE providers, and professional training 
• international data networks connect phones, computers and media 
• the financial system allows international credit card usage and provides access to money for business and industry. 

Some complex systems are engineered – there is a plan, the participants are known in advance, and there are protocols and regulations in place. A city metro system may be complex, but there is little ambiguity over its geographical extent, assets, operations or responsibility for the safety of the network. Other complex systems can be ad hoc – with no central authority, players joining and leaving at will, and regulation covered by multiple jurisdictions. COVID-19 has demonstrated how the PPE supply chain is an ad-hoc system. Often people find themselves in a complex system-of-systems that, until one system fails and there is a cascading effect on lots of other systems, no-one had previously thought of as being interconnected. Failure of the electricity supply in Lancaster in 2015 demonstrated how interconnected many essential services (for example, health and social care, education, food and water supply, communications, finance, retail, transport) in a community have become.