Back in 1983, in the inaugural issue of Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems, editorsin-chief Colin B. Brown and John Munro opened their editorial by stating that ‘The complexity of civil engineering practices has greatly increased over the last 30 years’, concluding that ‘this places on the engineer the onus of communicating efficiently with other professionals’. This observation has become increasingly prominent, with the built environment now being composed of a wide range of systems, interacting together across different scales and at almost real-time. With this Special Issue, we sought to take this observation towards one possible direction by addressing two interrelated questions: (1) should civil engineers play a role in understanding how organisations operate, and (2) is complex systems perspective a viable way for doing so, compared to other more established perspectives. Contributors to this Special Issue and I argue that the answer to both (1) and (2) is a reassuring yes. Focusing on (1), resolving the major challenges of the built environment requires coordinated collective action between formal organisations. Civil engineers play a central role to this collective action due to their position at the interface between multiple organisational functions. This provides a unique vantage point, as well as capabilities for solving the most pressing problems in terms of organisation. Porse (2019) and McDonald et al. (2019) provide good examples of how this vantage point can support this collective action at a policy level, in the context of water supply and earthquake resilience respectively (this issue). Focusing on (2), a complex systems perspective provides a unifying framework for understanding the collective action between organisations, and eventually deriving actionable insights. The perspective has found its home within the natural sciences, where it is typical to abstract the context in search for unifying frameworks (e.g. evidence shows that the underlying connectivity of a wide range of systems shares common features [Watts and Strogatz 1998]). This perspective has arguably improved our understanding of how these complex systems operate (Vespignani 2012). However, when it comes to deriving actionable insights, progress has been relatively slow. This has been partly due to the (justifiable) scepticism by which the engineering community has viewed the complex systems perspective: how can context be abstracted away when it serves as the background for the system’s function? (Willinger et al. 2002) Guo et al. use the context of construction safety to argue for a middle ground, where the complex systems perspective can

中文翻译：

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观点：作为复杂系统的组织

早在 1983 年，在《土木工程与环境系统》的创刊号中，主编 Colin B. Brown 和 John Munro 在他们的社论开篇说：“土木工程实践的复杂性在过去 30 年里大大增加了”，得出的结论是“这让工程师有责任与其他专业人士进行有效沟通”。这种观察变得越来越突出，建筑环境现在由范围广泛的系统组成，在不同尺度上几乎实时地相互作用。在本期特刊中，我们试图通过解决两个相互关联的问题将这一观察转向一个可能的方向：(1) 土木工程师是否应该在理解组织运作方面发挥作用，以及 (2) 复杂系统的观点是否是一种可行的方法, 与其他更成熟的观点相比。本特刊的贡献者和我认为对 (1) 和 (2) 的答案都是令人放心的肯定。着眼于（1），解决建筑环境的主要挑战需要正式组织之间协调一致的集体行动。由于土木工程师处于多个组织职能之间的接口处，因此他们在这一集体行动中发挥着核心作用。这提供了一个独特的有利位置，以及解决组织方面最紧迫问题的能力。Porse (2019) 和 McDonald 等人。（2019 年）提供了很好的例子，说明这个有利位置如何在政策层面支持这一集体行动，分别是在供水和抗震能力的背景下（本期）。专注于（2），复杂的系统视角为理解组织之间的集体行动提供了一个统一的框架，并最终得出可操作的见解。这种观点已经在自然科学中找到了它的家，在那里通常会抽象上下文以寻找统一的框架（例如，证据表明广泛系统的潜在连接具有共同特征 [Watts and Strogatz 1998]）。这种观点可以说提高了我们对这些复杂系统如何运作的理解（Vespignani 2012）。然而，在得出可操作的见解方面，进展相对缓慢。这部分是由于工程界对复杂系统观点的（合理的）怀疑：当上下文作为系统功能的背景时，如何抽象出它？(Willinger et al. 2002) Guo et al. 使用建筑安全的背景来论证一个中间立场，在那里复杂系统的观点可以