Clios

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Engineering Systems Division
Working Paper Series
ESD-WP-2003-01.07-ESD Internal Symposium

THE CONCEPT OF A CLIOS ANALYSIS
ILLUSTRATED BY THE MEXICO CITY CASE

REBECCA DODDER
Doctoral Candidate
Technology, Management & Policy Program
JOSEPH M. SUSSMAN
JR East Professor
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
and Engineering SystemsMAY 29-30, 2002

THE CONCEPT OF A CLIOS ANALYSIS
ILLUSTRATED BY THE MEXICO CITY CASE

REBECCA DODDER
Doctoral Candidate
Technology, Management & Policy Program

JOSEPH M.SUSSMAN
JR East Professor
Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering
and Engineering Systems

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts

February 23, 2003

11,873 Words
10 FiguresThe Concept of a CLIOS Analysis: Illustrated by the Mexico City Case

INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS A CLIOS?
The term CLIOS (Complex, Large-scale, Integrated, Open Systems) was conceived as
way to capture the salient characteristics of a class of systems that are of growing interest to
researchers, decisionmakers, policy makers and stakeholders. These systems range from an air
traffic control systemto the global climate system, and from Boston’s Big Dig to the eBay online
trading system.1
We start by defining the primary characteristics of CLIOS. First, a system is complex
when it is composed of a group of interrelated units (component and subsystems), for which the
degree and nature of the relationships is imperfectly known – with varying directionality,
magnitude and time-scales ofinteractions among the various subsystems. Second, CLIOS have
impacts that are large in magnitude, and often long-lived and of large-scale geographical extent.
Third, subsystems within CLIOS are integrated, closely coupled through feedback loops.
Finally, by open we mean that CLIOS explicitly include social, political and economic aspects
(Sussman, 2000a).
Finally, with CLIOS we are asconcerned with the complexity of the organizational and
institutional parts of the systems as we are with the physical system. In fact, understanding the
organizational and institutional structure and its interaction with the physical structure is one of
the key potential values of a CLIOS analysis.

MOTIVATION
The primary motivation for this paper is the authors’ perception that there is acritical
need for a new framework for both analyzing and managing this class of systems. Because of
the many sub-systems, the uncertainty in the behavior of the subsystems and their interactions,
and the degree of human agency involved, the emergent behavior of CLIOS is difficult to predict
and often counterintuitive. This holds true even when subsystem behavior is readily predictable.
Developingquantitative models that will predict the performance of the physical system can be
very difficult, and management challenges are even more difficult. Increasingly sophisticated
systems models have evolved to incorporate economic, social and political interactions with the
physical system (Marks, 2002). Nonetheless, the ability to integrate economic, social and
political issues into a systemsframework has been limited by a relatively weaker understanding
of organizations and institutional structures (Flood and Carson, 1993).
To place this paper in its own institutional context, the CLIOS framework is being
developed in a time of major transitions in many of the engineering disciplines at MIT and
elsewhere (Sussman, 2002b). We view engineering systems as “public” or “open” systems,meaning that the profession is responsible for dealing with and working in the broader social,
economic and political environments in which engineering projects are implemented. Illustrative

1

Examples drawn from Magee and de Weck (2002).

Dodder and Sussman

2

The Concept of a CLIOS Analysis: Illustrated by the Mexico City Case
of this transformation is the new Engineering...