A Tailoring of the Unified Architecture Framework's Meta‐Model for the Modeling of Systems‐of‐Systems

Abstract

Being used by single companies and by coalitions of governments at the same time, Architecture Frameworks have spread widely as a key tool for the enablement of the Model Based Systems Engineering approach. The Unified Architecture Framework, promoted by the Object Management Group, is rapidly emerging as the reference framework to describe Enterprise Architecture, providing a standard representation for both defense and non‐defense organizations’ architecture descriptions. The work described in the present paper concerns the implementation of a simplified meta‐model, derived as a tailoring of the Unified Architecture Framework's full meta‐model, aimed at allowing the usage of the UAF for the description of System Architectures, rather than Enterprise Architectures. The main UAF View Domains concerned with Systems having the characteristics of Systems‐of‐Systems (Operational, Strategic and Resources), will be analyzed and a solution will be shown to allow a simple implementation of SysML models, as an architectural description of such Systems. A study case will also be presented, developed as a joint effort of Leonardo and Aster for the modeling of naval Combat Systems.

UAF Strategic Planning for Enterprises

“…DoDAF, MODAF, and NAF were primarily created for the defense industry, making it difficult to apply them to other industries due to the lack of security and humanmachine integration views [7], [9], [10]. Moreover, crosscountry projects throughout NATO nations highlighted the need for a unified architecture to yield the greatest benefits [9] since interoperability between architectures created by various entities is becoming more and more necessary [11]. Therefore, the Object Management Group (OMG) developed the Unified Architecture Framework (UAF) as a unified architecture for DoDAF, MODAF, and NAF to be applicable to both military and commercial enterprises [9], [11].…”

“…Moreover, crosscountry projects throughout NATO nations highlighted the need for a unified architecture to yield the greatest benefits [9] since interoperability between architectures created by various entities is becoming more and more necessary [11]. Therefore, the Object Management Group (OMG) developed the Unified Architecture Framework (UAF) as a unified architecture for DoDAF, MODAF, and NAF to be applicable to both military and commercial enterprises [9], [11]. Tirone et al [11] depict the evolution of architecture frameworks since 1987 and how they unified and resulted in the UAF in 2016.…”

“…Therefore, the Object Management Group (OMG) developed the Unified Architecture Framework (UAF) as a unified architecture for DoDAF, MODAF, and NAF to be applicable to both military and commercial enterprises [9], [11]. Tirone et al [11] depict the evolution of architecture frameworks since 1987 and how they unified and resulted in the UAF in 2016.…”

UAF (Unified Architecture Framework) Based MBSE (UBM) Method to build a System of Systems Model

“…Tirone et al, 2018 discussed this issue and concluded that any entity which can be subject of "Architecture" should be the target of the UAF. The entity whose architecture is defined can be any: enterprise, system of systems, collection of systems, product line, individual system, portion of a system, product, service, individual hardware or software item, any other entity that is amenable to architectural definition (eg, data, doctrine, organization, process, method, technique, policy, facilities, etc) [Martin, 2016] The works reported within the literature [Tirone et al, 2018, Morkevicius et al, 2017 describes the tailoring of UAF to describe the architecture of system of systems. But those works do not describe any step by step method to build a system model necessary to give a clear guidance to system architects.…”

“…The UAF Based MBSE (UBM) method described within this paper uses a selected subset from the UAF domain model and defines a step by step procedure to construct the system model. The tailoring of UAF proposed by Tirone et al, 2018 selects the same perspectives as UBM, but they customize the UAF profile by adding some specific stereotypes as, System of Interest, Actor and Use Case. We use the UAF profile without customizations and provide the mapping between UAF elements and the common terms used by system engineers.…”