Guest Editorial: Special Section on Reliability, Resilience, and Prognostics Modeling of Complex Engineering Systems

The seven papers included in this special section focus on reliability, resilience, and prognostics modeling of complex engineering systems. This topic has become very challenging due to factors such as complex physical interdependence and functional interactions among mechanical, electrical, software, and control subsystems, as well as the interactions with external environments. The difficulties of modeling the reliability and resilience as well as system performance prognostics of complex engineering system have been observed from many perspectives, e.g., 1) the schedule delays and cost overruns of major government and industry commercial programs, and 2) the challenges when planning and managing recovery activities of critical infrastructure damaged due to extreme events. When multiple sources of information and disparate data are available, how to monitor, model, and predict the system resilience and reliability over time of complex engineering systems becomes essential and critical for safe, reliable, resilient, and economic operations of most cyber-physical systems.