Principles for architecting inherently adaptable complex system

There is an increasing intent to conceive and architect complex systems with enhanced adaptability. This attribute has been defined as a system's ability to change in response to evolving operational / mission / market environments. While current research and practice provide methods, process and tools for architecting at the system, system of system and complex systems levels in general: this research focuses on enhancing the specific quality attribute of adaptability. A principles based approach, consisting of a relatively small set of strategic outcome oriented concepts, could serve to guide the development of an adaptable architecture.;This dissertation establishes and examines a set of principles for architecting adaptable complex systems. The research design included an industry survey of 172 respondents, with 90% of the sample from the system engineering, system architecting or other engineering fields. The results form the survey built confidence in the synthesized principles and associated measures. The principles and measures receiving the most agreement from industry were further evaluated via an architecting experiment, which analyzed 78 complex system architectures generated from an identical Command and Control requirements set. The research explored the efficacy of the Principles of: Adaptive Layer, Constituent Autonomy, Deliberate Complexity and Self-Organization.;The findings indicate that: 1. The theoretical premise of the principles is valid, 2. The principles have a tendency to lead to more adaptable architectures, and 3. The measures associated with the principles have a tendency to indicate the adaptability of the architecture.;These findings offer a significant contribution to the field by providing a set of industry validated principles and empirically verified measures for architecting an inherently adaptable complex system, which could be examined in the context similar complex systems (e.g. first responder command and control, federal incident management, and complex systems used in the financial industry and power utility management industry). This could lead to a larger principles based approach for this class of systems, similar to the shift in approaches from engineering systems to engineering system of systems.