Title:

Learning from Nature to Increase the Resilience of Connected Manufacturing, Energy, and Other Complex Systems.

Speaker:

Mr. Bryan Watson

Affiliation:

Georgia Institute of Technology

When:

Wednesday, February 2, 2022 at 2:00:00 PM   Add to Calendar

Where:

MRDC Building, Room 4211

Host:

Dr. Julie Linsey
julie.linsey@me.gatech.edu
4046701591

Abstract

Modern life is enhanced by complex Systems of Systems, SoS. SoS are networks that combine constituents such as financial systems, power infrastructure, and transportation networks. Combining independent systems increases the possible services and utility provided to users. The response of a SoS to unexpected system failures, however, undermines its effectiveness and could mitigate the advantages of combining constituent systems. The increased complexity of SoS and multi-layer interaction effects hamper the use of traditional System Engineering approaches, for example, design by decomposition, to mitigate these unexpected failures. One possible solution to unexpected failures is to increase resilience of the SoS. Resilience is an emergent property that describes the ability of a SoS to resist faults, minimize disruption during a fault, and recover from a fault. One approach to increase SoS resilience is using biologically inspired design to inform both SoS network structure and agent behaviors. In this talk, Bryan Watson will present an overview of SoS, the need for increased resilience, the property of emergence, and why biologically inspired design was chosen as an approach to increase resilience. A brief discussion of why system and SoS level thinking is of interest to all engineers will be presented. Two separate approaches to increase SoS resilience will be demonstrated on SoS models. A lumber manufacturing industry’s network structure is informed by ecosystem functional roles and graph theory metrics. An electric motor manufacturing supply chain’s agent behavior is modified after an investigation into eusocial insect, for example, ant colony, behavior. System dynamic and agent-based models are used to validate that these design approaches can be used to increase SoS resilience, often beyond the ability of traditional resilience engineering approaches. The talk closes with a discussion of the future direction of biologically inspired design for resilience, BID4R. This talk will be of interest to any engineer who studies network science, systems engineering, resilience, system modeling, designs artifacts that interact with larger systems or SoS, and those with applications in energy and manufacturing systems.

Biography

Bryan Watson, PE is a Ph.D. candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He earned his B.S. in Systems Engineering at the United States Naval Academy in 2009. After graduating, Bryan joined the nuclear Navy, serving as a submarine officer onboard the U.S.S Louisville and at the Naval Prototype Training Unit from 2009-2017. Significant milestones include earning the Master Training Specialist Certification (the military’s highest instructor accreditation), Nuclear Professional Engineer Certification, two Naval Achievement Medals, the Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal, and a Naval Commendation Medal for his work troubleshooting and repairing the Moored Training Ship 635’s reactor and electrical distribution faults. Following his transition from active duty, Bryan began pursuing a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. At the Computation and Advancement of Sustainable Systems Lab he developed a new method for distributed system demand estimation and at the Sustainable Design and Manufacturing lab his work focused on increasing System of System resilience. Bryan is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and was the first Georgia Tech student awarded a Pat Tillman Foundation Fellowship. His research interests include Systems of Systems, resilience, biologically inspired design, system dynamic modeling, and agent-based modeling. Bryan’s work has been published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, Journal of Mechanical Design, and IEEE’s Systems Journal. While at Georgia Tech, he mentored nine students, of which four were offered PURA awards, and published with four as coauthors. Following his Ph.D. Bryan looks forward to establishing a lab investigating the use of biologically inspired design to increase the resilience of Systems of Systems, resulting in more reliable services to users, increased user safety, and increased sustainability for connected manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure systems.

Notes

Please join virtually via https://bluejeans.com/256068766/4160