The crossovers and connectivity between systems engineering and the sustainable development goals: A scoping study

The United Nation’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) are interconnected and indi-visible and need to be addressed in a systematic and holistic way. However, a lack of stakeholder perspective, fragmented responses, and a dearth of integration across sectors have long been perceived as the SDGs’ main pitfalls. In recent years, scholars are calling to address these issues by adopting a systems engineering perspective, as this approach espouses a stakeholder-focused posi-tion, embraces a holistic and dynamic mindset, and provides a variety of technical and managerial toolkits, which can help to untangle the complexity and interactions inherent in global sustainabil-ity. Nevertheless, little has been done to map the existing literature, comprehensively review, and synthesize research evidence in this field. Therefore, this paper aims to conduct a scoping study that analyzes the extant evidence to uncover the contributions of systems engineering in advancing the SDGs. A three-phase methodology integrating natural language processing and systematic literature review is used to investigate this space. We conclude that systems engineering has been an active catalyst promoting the SDGs, and that systems engineering has the potential to support more transdisciplinary research to achieve long-term transformational and sustainable change across sectors and disciplines.