The book "Systems Engineering: Practice and Theory" is a collection of articles written by developers and researches from all around the globe. Mostly they present methodologies for separate Systems Engineering processes; others consider issues of adjacent knowledge areas and sub-areas that significantly contribute to systems development, operation, and maintenance. Case studies include aircraft, spacecrafts, and space systems development, post-analysis of data collected during operation of large systems etc. Important issues related to "bottlenecks" of Systems Engineering, such as complexity, reliability, and safety of different kinds of systems, creation, operation and maintenance of services, system-human communication, and management tasks done during system projects are addressed in the collection. This book is for people who are interested in the modern state of the Systems Engineering knowledge area and for systems engineers involved in different activities of the area. Some articles may be a valuable source for university lecturers and students; most of case studies can be directly used in Systems Engineering courses as illustrative materials.

GPRA is intended to shift the focus of government decisionmaking, management, and accountability from activities and processes to the results and outcomes achieved by federal programs. New and valuable information on the plans, goals, and strategies of federal agencies has been provided since federal agencies began implementing GPRA. Under GPRA, annual performance plans are to clearly inform the Congress and the public of (1) the annual performance goals for agencies' major programs and activities, (2) the measures that will be used to gauge performance, (3) the strategies and resources required to achieve the performance goals, and (4) the procedures that will be used to verily and validate performance information. These annual plans, issued soon after transmittal of the President's budget, provide a direct linkage between an agency's longer-term goals and mission and day-to-day activities. Annual performance reports are to report subsequently on the degree to which performance goals were met The issuance of the agencies' performance reports, due by March 31 of each year, represents a new and potentially more substantive phase in the implementation of GPRA-the opportunity to assess federal agencies' actual performance for the prior fiscal year and to consider what steps are needed to improve performance, and reduce costs in the future. NASA's final performance plan was provided to the Congress on July 17, 2001.

The Safety of Systems contains the invited papers presented at the fifteenth annual Safety-critical Systems Symposium, held at Bristol, UK in February 2007. The papers included in this volume cover a broad spectrum of important safety issues. They provide a combination of industrial experience and recent developments, and are presented under a variety of headings.

System Health Management: with Aerospace Applications provides the first complete reference text for System Health Management (SHM), the set of technologies and processes used to improve system dependability. Edited by a team of engineers and consultants with SHM design, development, and research experience from NASA, industry, and academia, each heading up sections in their own areas of expertise and co-coordinating contributions from leading experts, the book collates together in one text the state-of-the-art in SHM research, technology, and applications. It has been written primarily as a reference text for practitioners, for those in related disciplines, and for graduate students in aerospace or systems engineering. There are many technologies involved in SHM and no single person can be an expert in all aspects of the discipline.System Health Management: with Aerospace Applications provides an introduction to the major technologies, issues, and references in these disparate but related SHM areas. Since SHM has evolved most rapidly in aerospace, the various applications described in this book are taken primarily from the aerospace industry. However, the theories, techniques, and technologies discussed are applicable to many engineering disciplines and application areas. Readers will find sections on the basic theories and concepts of SHM, how it is applied in the system life cycle (architecture, design, verification and validation, etc.), the most important methods used (reliability, quality assurance, diagnostics, prognostics, etc.), and how SHM is applied in operations (commercial aircraft, launch operations, logistics, etc.), to subsystems (electrical power, structures, flight controls, etc.) and to system applications (robotic spacecraft, tactical missiles, rotorcraft, etc.).