Characterizing complexity in the design of human-integrated systems

System complexity increases as technologies evolve. An understanding of the evolution of complexity can offer insights and help develop guidelines for designing the levels and details of automation, and for allocating functions among intelligent agents. The goal is to be able to manage complexity by design. The author discusses efforts to understand and characterize complexity in terms of taxonomies adapted from evolutionary biology and solar equivalent of energy proposed by H.T. Odum (1988).