Designing Complex Systems

ix

Preface

is book attempts to develop a rigorous basis for carrying out that early part of

the design process that converts a set of requirements on the service to be provided

by a system into requirements on a set of interacting functional elements, which

then form the point of departure for the classical part of the design process — the

conversion of functional requirements into a physical entity that, through its opera-

tion, will satisfy those requirements.

e reason for including this book in a series dedicated to Complex Systems,

that is, a class of systems where the elements are predominantly independent agents

behaving and interacting ...