Systems and Control for Societal Impact: IFAC TC 9.2 Visions and UN SDGs

Abstract

The digital revolution has opened numerous new possibilities for control systems solutions with potential for widespread societal impacts. Thus, it is important to explore how the design of control systems can be performed in such a manner that these impacts can be steered towards contributing to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). The IFAC Technical Committee 9.2, Systems and Control for Societal Impact, is deeply interested in maximizing the benefits of automation, control and intelligent systems for society while avoiding their possible negative effects by anticipating potential adverse effects. The TC 9.2 is building its vision and activities along the emerging new field of cyber-physical-human systems (CPHS). This field is growing due to the proliferation of interactions between humans and (embedded, networked, interconnected) cyber-physical systems (CPS). The interplay between humans and CPS leads to new societal impacts and requires new tools for directing and guiding these impacts. Moreover, such interactions in CPHS require interdisciplinary collaborations between engineers and social and behavioral scientists and humanists for achieving the responsible development of CPHS.In this paper, we recap the TC9.2 topics and visions. We discuss the responsible development of CPHS which is the driving goal of the TC9.2 committee. We initiate an analysis to relate TC 9.2 topics with UN SDGs, through the idea of “six transformations”. The importance of stages of research development driven by SDG goals as well as the importance of individuals, corporations, and governments in this responsible design of systems is also highlighted. The close relation of the TC 9.2 visions with Digital Revolution for Sustainable Development through CPHS is discussed in detail. Relations with other transformations are also studied.