UNSW Canberra Capability Systems Centre

Our vision

Two men at the Capability Systems Centre

Strategic context

Australia’s evolving and dynamic strategic environment creates significant challenges for Australia’s capacity to develop capabilities, especially in critical and high-investment public policy areas (including Defence, national security, emerging technologies and critical supply chains).

The Government is shifting its focus towards building sovereign capabilities built in Australia for Australia. Part of this focus is an emphasis on joint endeavors connecting academia and industry to deliver strategic advantage across the full spectrum of critical capabilities.

This strategic context presents an opportunity for UNSW Canberra, and the Capability Systems Centre (CSC) in particular, to position itself as a sovereign and interdisciplinary research-led decision support and education capability that could advance Australia’s aspirations for the future.

Our vision

We aspire to be a world-leading academic centre and trusted partner for Government and industry in the area of Capability development. This includes all aspects related to Capability lifecycle such as design, acquisition, and sustainment, and optimised towards critical and high-investment public policy areas including Defence, national security, emerging technologies, and critical supply chains.

Our values

  • Excellence: striving for exceptional outcomes in all we do.
  • Integrity: always doing the right thing.
  • Better together: connecting locally and globally with our partners, stakeholders, colleagues, and community to achieve better outcomes.

Our niche

Our key niche lies in the systems thinking perspective we bring to how we view and interact with the world to solve complex capability development problems. This perspective is embedded into our:

  • Focus: viewing capability as complex and adaptive system (i.e. assets, processes, lifecycle phases), which necessitate interdisciplinary systems-based methodologies (systems engineering, systems of systems, decision science). 
  • Approach: mobilising knowledge co-creation and co-design methodologies for collaboratively working with stakeholders to create fit-for-purpose products and services, and achieve real-world impacts.
  • People: blending scientific knowledge and domain expertise through teams of researchers, industry specialists, commercial and security experts. 
  • Technology: architecture of data and computational modeling technologies to support innovation in research and education. 
  • Portfolio: a system of unique offerings (i.e. research projects, courses spinoffs, professional education, knowledge exchange) designed to maximise the capacity for capability development and delivery through education, decision support, research and training.