Scope

This publication provides a systems-level, focused forum for application-oriented manuscripts that address complex systems or system-of-systems, of national and global significance. It intends to encourage and facilitate cooperation and interaction among IEEE Societies with systems-level and systems engineering interest, and to attract non-IEEE contributors and readers from around the globe. Our IEEE Systems Council job is to address issues in new ways that are not solvable in the domains of the existing IEEE or other societies or global organizations. These problems do not fit within traditional hierarchical boundaries. For example, disaster response such as that triggered by hurricanes, tsunamis, or volcanic eruptions is not solvable by pure engineering solutions. We need to think about changing and enlarging the paradigm to include systems issues.

JOURNAL NEED: The journal is intended to stimulate awareness, appreciation and utilization of systems thinking and the supporting systems engineering disciplines, especially for complex systems, systems-of-systems, complex cyber-physical systems, and complex smart systems, across many domains and application areas.

Attention will be directed to theory, technology, design methodology, management, applications, successful lessons, impact in the real life, and social implications. In particular, but not only, themes that will be addressed include architectures, complexity, dynamics, integration, interoperability, adaptability, completeness, effectiveness, modeling, analysis, simulation, development tools and environments, engineering, science, mission assurance, regulatory compliance, robustness, reliability, availability, safety, maintainability, quality, risk management, interaction, usability, human factors, privacy, deployment, management, operations, communications, security, standards, applications, ethics, and education.

Examples of in-scope papers: Papers considering systems in which several independent entities are interacting and cooperating. For example, networked systems such as power grids, sensor networks, multi-agent systems, and communication networks are considered in-scope, when the main focus is not just one component of the network. In other words, the analysis and design should take the interaction between these components into account.

Examples of out-of-scope papers: Papers considering one single system or one specific component of a network. For example, papers dealing with one specific power grid component, such as inverters, transformers, etc. are considered out-of-scope. Note that a feedback control system, although it consists of different components such as a plant, a controller, an actuator, and a sensor, is considered just one system, so this type of control system is out-of-scope, no matter how complex the controller is. A system consisting of a transmitter and a receiver is also not within this journal’s scope because these two devices are considered one system combined. Papers merely dealing with graph theory are not in-scope. Papers dealing with neural networks and fuzzy systems are not in scope, unless they are used to address a problem related to, for example, interconnected systems. Also, papers based only on data analysis are out-of-scope because they do not tackle a complex system from the systems engineering viewpoint. Papers on pure cryptography with no impact analysis on the communication network are also out-of-scope. BioMed applications related to brain interface or related to robotic vision or image processing are considered out-of-scope even though these are complex problems. There are other IEEE journals for this type of application. Papers related to signal and image processing techniques are out-of-scope.