Abstract—Socio-technical systems are highly complex as they
contain a number of domains each of which including numerous
interdependent elements. With such complexity, policy makers
and managers need to adapt (make incremental changes in) sociotechnical
systems, and currently available approaches for such
adaptations are rare. Consequently, and to fill this gap, this paper
takes a multi-domain approach based upon Design Structure and
Multi-domain matrices to develop a multi-domain model of sociotechnical
system. Moreover, that model is analyzed according to
both the change propagation measures of the non-human domain
and the information processing view of the stakeholder domain of
socio-technical systems. Application of this method for the Dutch
railway system is discussed in Part 2 of this paper.
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