Maarten Bonnema

Associate professor | System engineering & multidisciplinary design

Institution: University of Twente
Work package: WP10 Integral models
In NEON: 2020 onwards
Now: Full Professor, Systems Engineering & Multidisciplinary Design, University of Twente.

WP10 principal investigator at the University of Twente; co-author of all NEON papers of UT PhD candidate Younjung Choi (likely her supervisor, not stated publicly); member of Peter Hogeveen's doctoral committee (2024).

Expertise: Design, production and management; systems engineering

G. Maarten Bonnema works on systems engineering and multidisciplinary design of complex systems, with a focus on models that support communication between disciplines; applications include high-tech industry and electric-mobility policy making. He co-wrote a textbook on systems design and engineering.

About me

Life is beautiful! Even at times when things look bleak, there are enough moments to enjoy. I have a broad interest, from a hike through the Norwegian mountains, or a long roadtrip in Outback Australia, with my wife and with or without my two sons (now 18 and 20). In my spare time I listen to music a lot, but I also love to make stuff like furniture from wood. A beautiful match between these two is building loudspeakers. I tend to think a lot in systems: how things are – or should be – related and interact.

Personal Motivation

The big picture and thinking in systems to facilitate development of complex systems is what I’m mostly interested in. Developing complex systems requires integration across disciplines. Facilitating the communication between disciplines is an important focus. Applications are in (a.o.) high-tech industry and electric mobility policy-making. At this point in time, we as society are facing large challenges: COVID-19 and Climate Change. Thinking in systems and seeing how parts interact, and put that into various types of models is very useful here. Models facilitate cross-disciplinary communication. Finding the trade-off between specificity and wide understandability of such models is a challenge that I would like to address. Further how to integrate the models? The cover of the Systems Design and Engineering book I wrote with two colleagues is a visualization of such interactions. It would be a great success for me if we in NEON can create a multidisciplinary model that is useful for very diverse stakeholders: technology developers, policy makers, user-groups etc. We need to develop a pluggable architecture that allows for model refinement and expansion.

Agent-based models for zero emission energy and mobility

NEON’s overall goal is an integrated agent-based model for the energy transition. That is a task no-one can accomplish by him-/herself. Therefore the project is split into smaller accomplishable modelling workpackages. My research focus will be the creation of a pluggable architecture for all these models that are developed in NEON. How to make sure the individual models can interact, and develop in different paces is where the main challenge lies. We have to investigate whether we need an underlying overall model, or can work with API’s, or other interfacing mechanisms.
Intensive interaction with othere WPs about the interfacing mechanisms is essential!

Link to other neon research

With what persons or what other work packages do you want to work together in order to increase the cross-disciplinary potential of NEON?

Profile text from the former NEON website.

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Publications and talks

Perspectives on Modeling Energy and Mobility Transitions for Stakeholders: A Dutch Case (journal-article, 2023)
An Approach for Exploring Non-technical Complexity in Engineering Design Processes (conference-paper, 2022)
Functions of Models Illustrating the Transitions of Energy and Mobility Systems (conference-paper, 2022)