The real world is a complex system

Margetts, R ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2990-5316, 2025. The real world is a complex system. London: Engineering Professors’ Council.

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Abstract

We live in a complex world. Complexity is a key challenge, captured in leadership terms by the VUCA framework: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (Lanucha 2024). Engineers have the privilege of creating products and processes for humans to use in this landscape. Each of these likely has numerous parts which interact, as well as interacting with the environment, people, and needing to meet a host of safety, quality, sustainability, ethics, and financial obligations. Traditionally, engineers analyse problems by breaking them down into simple parts. This helps understanding and makes calculations feasible, but it’s easy to lose understanding of the whole system. Any change can easily create a problem elsewhere. From a technical viewpoint, engineers need to understand this interconnectedness in order for their creations to work. In a wider sense, ‘systems thinking’ is a skill central to engineering quality and management techniques, which seek to rationalise the complexity of entire organisations and their ever-changing market pressures.

The EPC’s Complex Systems Toolkit provides accessible, practical resources for embedding complex systems concepts into engineering education. The Complex Systems Toolkit is supported by Quanser. Developed through global collaboration from an interdisciplinary team, the Complex Systems Toolkit reflects expertise across academia and industry and is shaped to evolve through community input and feedback. The full toolkit is available at https://epc.ac.uk/resources/toolkit/complex-systems-toolkit/

Item Type:	Website content
Creators:	Margetts, R.
Publisher:	Engineering Professors’ Council
Place of Publication:	London
Date:	1 December 2025
Identifiers:	Number Type 2540961 Other
Rights:	The EPC’s Complex Systems Toolkit provides accessible, practical resources for embedding complex systems concepts into engineering education. The Complex Systems Toolkit is supported by Quanser. Developed through global collaboration from an interdisciplinary team, the Complex Systems Toolkit reflects expertise across academia and industry and is shaped to evolve through community input and feedback. The full toolkit is available at https://epc.ac.uk/resources/toolkit/complex-systems-toolkit/
Divisions:	Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	08 Dec 2025 09:23
Last Modified:	08 Dec 2025 09:23
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/54835

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