A change in government policy can send waves of crippling impacts through the design and development of publicly funded complex engineering systems. Thus it is important for system architects and designers to understand the interaction of policy with their systems, and to strive for policy...

Engineering companies frequently face product development challenges. Competitive pressures, industrial or societal innovations, and government regulations are some of the many factors that drive the need for new or better products. Companies respond to these drivers and changing needs by...

A system dynamics model is developed and run to study the adoption of fiber-to-the-home as a residential broadband technology. Communities that currently do not have broadband in the United States are modeled. This case is of particular interest to U.S. policymakers, but also relevant to other...

Policies to avert the threat of dangerous climate change focus on stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations by drastically reducing anthropogenic emissions of carbon. Such reductions require limiting the use of fossil fuels-which supply the bulk of energy to economic activity, and...

This research demonstrates that sustainable development is a multidimensional concept that should be approached in a transdisciplinary manner. Its objective has been to synthesize and integrate disparate and currently unconnected lines of thought that have not yet been applied in a systematic...

The debate over a policy response to global climate change has been and continues to be deadlocked between 1) the view that the impacts of climate change are too uncertain and so any policy response should be delayed until we learn more, and 2) the view that we cannot wait to resolve the...

The evolution of the architecture of long-lived complex socio-technical systems have important consequences and can happen in unexpected ways. This dissertation explores this question through the study of the architectural evolution of Municipal Electric Utilities (MEUs) and their...

Modem society requires reliable and safe operation of its infrastructure. Policymakers believe that, in many industries, competitive markets and regulatory incentives will result in system performance superior to that under command-and-control regulation. Analytical techniques to evaluate the...

This dissertation addresses the issue of performance standards in developing nations, focusing on the role of local content requirements. It proposes a theoretical framework to understand the impact of this policy on the decisions of firms and the welfare of the domestic economy, and offers a...