Advancing Systems Engineering in the Age of Digital Transformation

Dear Colleagues,

The simultaneous pursuit of green and digital transformations presents both an unprecedented opportunity and a significant challenge for systems engineering (SE). While the green transition aims to ensure environmental sustainability and resilience, the digital transition focuses on leveraging emerging technologies to transform how systems are conceived, developed, and operated. Ideally, these two transitions reinforce one another; however, they can also lead to conflicting requirements, trade-offs, and unintended consequences.

To address these challenges, systems engineering approaches must evolve beyond their traditional boundaries. There is a growing need for transdisciplinary systems engineering (TSE) approaches that not only integrate insights across disciplines, but that also consider the broader environmental, social, and technological ecosystems in which systems operate. In an increasingly interconnected and uncertain world, addressing multifaceted complexity requires methods and tools capable of embracing both systemic interdependencies and contextual impacts.

This Special Issue invites original and innovative scientific contributions that advance the application of systems engineering in the context of the ongoing green and digital transitions. We particularly welcome research and practice-oriented submissions on SE, model-based systems engineering (MBSE), and multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO), with an emphasis on methods that adopt a system-of-systems perspective to address both interdisciplinary integration and transdisciplinary requirements.

Submissions may include methodological advancements, theoretical insights, or practical applications that respond to the complex, adaptive challenges of modern engineered systems, especially those promoting resilience, sustainability, and transdisciplinary thinking. This Special Issue aims to foster dialogue between academics and practitioners to collectively progress the state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice in systems engineering.

We especially encourage contributions that address the following topics:

• Transdisciplinary thinking;
• System-of-systems engineering;
• Enterprise systems engineering;
• Systems engineering;
• Model-based systems engineering (MBSE);
• Agile systems engineering;
• Systems engineering decision patterns;
• Knowledge-based decision making in SE;
• Project/program management and SE integration;
• Artificial intelligence for SE and SE for artificial intelligence;
• Multidisciplinary design optimization;
• Resilience;
• Adaptability;
• Sustainability;
• Digital engineering (digital models, digital shadows, and digital twins);
• Green and digital transformation;
• Requirements engineering;

Dr. Ali Asghar Bataleblu
Prof. Dr. David Cochran
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Systems is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• system-of-systems engineering
• transdisciplinary systems engineering
• model-based systems engineering (MBSE)
• resilience
• adaptability
• sustainability
• AI4SE and SE4AI
• digital engineering