Bas Van der Leeuw

Systems Engineering Professional

System-of-Systems Modelling: Two real-world applications

Bio.
Bas van der Leeuw is a systems engineering professional with extensive experience in complex, highly regulated system-of-systems environments. He has worked across multiple domains as a system architect, integrator, and MBSE lead. An INCOSE member since 2013, he became a Certified Systems Engineering Professional (CSEP) in 2016. Since joining TNO in 2023, Bas has focused on developing and applying MBSE approaches for the high-tech industry and energy sector, while also researching the challenges of Digital Engineering transformations. His work emphasises the practical value of Systems Engineering: not as a goal in itself, but as an integrating discipline that connects domain experts, project leaders, and decision makers to support balanced decision-making around complex societal and technological challenges.

Abstract.

Many contemporary challenges manifest at the level of missions and operations rather than isolated systems. Achieving desired outcomes, such as military effectiveness or the reliable and resilient delivery of energy, depends on the collective behaviour of multiple, independently governed systems. These challenges are shaped by strong interdependencies, non-linear effects, and evolving stakeholder objectives. As systems become increasingly digital, interconnected, and software-intensive, traditional system-centric engineering approaches provide limited insight into cross-system impacts and emergent behaviour. A structured, mission- or context-oriented perspective is therefore essential to understand, reason about, and influence outcomes at system-of-systems level.

In the defense domain, this need is addressed through Mission Engineering, which treats the mission as the primary object of engineering and explicitly links objectives, operational context, mission threads, and system capabilities. In contrast, the energy domain operates in a fundamentally different governance mode. Here, constituent systems collaborate, and at times compete, to deliver public and private services, relying on shared policies, standards, regulations, and mutual agreements rather than centralized command and control. In this domain, we apply system-of-systems modelling, emphasizing system interactions and the effects of interventions. It supports stakeholders such as asset managers and policy makers in anticipating the outcomes of their actions, particularly in long-term and complex challenges such as energy transition.

A holistic approach like system-of-systems modelling should account for PESTEL factors, as they shape the assumptions, constraints, and uncertainties on which the model is built. Tracking these external factors helps keep the model relevant for early validation as its broader context evolves. This presentation demonstrates how system-of-systems modelling is applied in the energy domain, where distributed ownership and governance shape both analysis and decision-making for interventions.