1. A reconfigurable system for monitoring the health of a complex system comprising: a plurality of standardized executable application modules, each standardized executable application module containing instructions to perform one of a plurality of different standardized functions; a plurality of computing nodes arranged in a hierarchical structure comprising one or more layers of the computing nodes, wherein each computing node is configured to execute one or more selected standardized executable applications of the plurality of standardized executable application modules, and wherein each computing node includes a workflow service module and a loaded configuration file, each workflow service module configured to control execution of the selected standardized executable applications as directed by the loaded configuration file to perform a specialized function for health monitoring.