Automation and control in large-scale interactive systems

Designing increasingly complex distributed systems is a challenging engineering problem. Computers, control strategies and communications networks are the tools we have to use. Their effective use should be directed by a science competent to handle the architecture and behavior of large-scale dynamic systems. This is systems science, the science of communications and control in federated systems. The application of cybernetic principles to the design of enterprise control systems yields architectures with specific functional, structural and performance characteristics.