We propose a level set method for systems of PDEs which is consistent with the previous research pursued by Evans (1996) for the heat equation and by Giga and Sato (2001) for Hamilton-Jacobi equations. Our approach follows a geometric construction related to the notion of barriers introduced by De Giorgi. The main idea is to force a comparison principle between manifolds of different codimension and require each nonzero sub-level of a solution of the level set equation to be a barrier for the graph of a solution of the corresponding system. We apply the method to a class of systems of first order quasi-linear equations. We compute the level set equation associated with suitable first order systems of conservation laws, with the mean curvature flow of a manifold of arbitrary codimension and with systems of reaction-diffusion equations.
