Integrating SysML and Agent‐Based Modeling for Rapid Architecture Evaluation

Abstract

In the face of the changing operational requirements and demands for new capabilities, it often is necessary for systems architects to make substantial changes in a system's architecture. However, traditional systems engineering processes, where architects finalized architecture during the initial concept development stages and engineers develop system simulations during later lifecycle phases, do not support a rapid architecture evolution. In this article, we propose a model‐based systems engineering (MBSE) process to facilitate the rapid evaluation of changes in systems architecture and/or design artifacts for complex systems. This process specifies the minimum set of information that engineers need to include in systems architecture using SysML diagrams with traceability between the diagrams and the agent‐based simulation (ABS) models of a complex system. By integrating SysML and ABS models early in the development lifecycle, teams can readily trace any future evolution of systems architecture represented by the SysML diagrams to changes in an ABS model and hence can rapidly evaluate the impact of architectural evolution. We demonstrate the application of the proposed process using a NASA‐sponsored case study for developing ab initio architectures of the National Airspace System (NAS) where we achieved significant time savings in developing an ABS model of evolving NAS architecture based on SysML‐ABS integration.