Engineering Design of an Environmental Management System: A Transdisciplinary Response to the Rhino Poaching Problem

Abstract

The big issues we face today, that require properly engineered solutions, contain society, nature and man‐made components. It is difficult to consider these systems within the traditional systems contexts, where we can set well‐defined boundaries during the design (analytical decomposition) process. Still, the analysis/synthesis process must be thorough enough to ensure that the functional, physical and allocated architectures that are discovered and defined during the analytical phase, can deliver a reasonable, traceable outcome on synthesis of the solution. The authors firstly accept that the feedback loop and recursive causal nature inherent to eco‐socio‐technical systems cast them in the domain of wicked problems. Systems engineering relies heavily on being able to understand the questions and the needs of stakeholders to be addressed through the accurate conceptualising of a problem and associated solution space. Thus, in this paper we turn to the concept of complexity for guiding principles to address the wicked problems through appropriate research (analytical) methods that transcends disciplinary focussed solution finding. To highlight the proposed approach the development of an environmental management system as a response to the rhino‐poaching problem is briefly discussed. The approach, when refined, should be able to address other resource management efforts.

System-level causal modelling of widescale resource plundering: Acting on the rhino poaching catastrophe

“…This fits better with the required agile adaptive approach (such as the spiral approach described in Korb & Nicholson (2010)) to the constantly changing problem: "Rather than working towards a consolidated baseline of a requirement/solution, the requirements are diverse and evolving as the understanding of the problem domain improves." (Roodt & Koen, 2014) Figure 6: Geology map and predicted heat map overlaid Figure 6 illustrates a small zoomed in area of the predicted poaching event heat map for the KNP overlaid with the geology map. The lighter the heat map, the higher the probability of a poaching event.…”

“…We use the term "expert knowledge" here to describe the knowledge and understanding of people with experience in any area we discover that may be of utility in adequately dealing with the complexity of the problem, including cultural and societal narratives. Furthermore, using a BN to capture an agreed upon set of initial drivers and to indicate when and where the next poaching attacks are likely to occur, can be used to co-create and enhance the shared understanding, which is a pre-requisite for good decision making (Roodt & Koen, 2014).…”

The recursively generative nature of complex agri-eco-socio-technical systems a transdisciplinary approach to developing a low carbon footprint farming system

“…To conclude this discussion of the underlying procedural methodology, it is important to consider how this approach differs from the standard system engineering approaches we are accustomed to [22]. One could argue that the core of systems engineering is similar or identical to that of the transdisciplinary process.…”