LAUSR

This issue of Environment Systems & Decisions features papers developed from the 16th Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER 2018), held May 8–9, 2018 at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. CSER 2018 offered researchers in academia, industry, and government a common forum to present, discuss, and influence systems engineering research. The conference provided access to forward-looking research by renowned academicians as well as perspectives from senior industry and government representatives. Co-founded by the University of Southern California and Stevens Institute of Technology in 2003, the CSER series of conferences has become the preeminent event for researchers in systems engineering across the globe. The conference theme of Systems Engineering in Context was intended to highlight the ways that context–economic, social, cultural, organizational, and otherwise–can shape decision problems and other aspects of systems engineering. In their introduction to the inaugural issue of Environment Systems and Decisions, Linkov, Lambert, and Collier (2013) stated the first word in the title of the journal “is intended to imply not only the natural environment, but also the environment in which a problem, decision, or innovation exists.” The focus of CSER 2018 on the context of decision-making and systems engineering is in keeping with this usage of the word environment.