Steampunk System of Systems Engineering: A Case Study of Successful System of Systems Engineering in 19th Century Britain

Abstract

There has been an explosion of interest in the development of System of Systems engineering approaches in the last ten years. Going from an average of 10 papers a year at the end of the 1990s, there has been over 250 papers a year published on the topic each year for the past five years.The vast majority of these papers present System of Systems' (SoS) challenges as novel and challenging at the edge of our understanding of systems engineering. The general consensus is that the explosion of SoS is unprecedented, and therefore requires unprecedented approaches to SoS engineers.Whilst the authors do not disagree that SoS are challenging and require a different approach than product systems engineering techniques, we do not believe that SoS are unprecedented. This paper describes the development of a large and complex SoS as it was established, evolved and then eventually merged into a single large system. This evolution took place from the early 1830's through to the early 1950s. The SoS was the British rail network. This paper:• Describes the growth of the British rail network from 150 independent railways through to one integrated network; • Describes the key operational, business and technical changes needed to move the network from a virtual SoS, through a collaborative SoS to a directed single system; 617• Evaluates the SoS against three basic SoS approaches/taxonomies: the US DoD SoS classifications, the UK MOD SoS Approach and the UK Department for Transport engineering assurance framework; • Identifies the lack of importance of global technical standards in delivering SoS effectiveness; • Identifies gaps in the frameworks, in particularly with respect to the economic drivers for creating an SoS.Much like the artistic and literary genre of Steampunk, this case study is a mixture of familiar SoS concepts and approaches in an unfamiliar Victorian setting. Unlike Steampunk this case study is not only amusing and entertaining, it is also educational.

Strengthening Collaboration, Integration and Modelling in System of Systems Engineering

“…System science organising systems into structured framework Eisner et al 1991 [61] Meta-systems engineering framework combining independent systems Shenhar et al 1994 [226] Taxonomy with technological uncertainty and scope Noam 1994 [196] Telecommunication infrastructure moving from "network of networks" to an SoS Manthorpe 1996 [172] Focus on the jointness between C4I in a defence setting Maier 1996 [167] Most influential paper defining the OMGEE characteristics of SoS and the engineering of SoS started to increase and in the middle of the decade that followed the number increased rapidly. This development has also been shown by Kemp et al [128], as illustrated in Kotov 1997 [133] Large-scale concurrent and distributed systems Lukasik 1998 [164] The importance of educating of engineers to deal with evolving self-organising systems Roe 1999 [212] Systems engineering process for military SoS Cook et al 1999 [44] SoS as a systems methodology for military systems with concerns for hierarchy, emergence, and C2 Krygiel 1999 [138] Focus on interoperability of information and data sharing Pei 2000 [204] SoS as a defining factor in future battlefield scenarios Carlock et al 2001 [33] Enterprise Systems Engineering point of view Sage et al 2001 [215] Use of the strategy "new federalism" for organisational structuring Chen et al 2003 [35] Focus on the SoS environment with a core in architecture interoperability and dynamic behaviour Keating et al 2003 [127] SoS as a meta-system of interrelated complex subsystems Bar-Yam et al 2004 [11] Derives SoS characteristic from the fields military, biology and sociology Crossley 2004 [47] SoS as a multidisciplinary research in interoperability, individual behaviour and human behaviour De Laurentis et al 2005 [54] Three dimension taxonomy for SoS analysis and design Abbott 2006 [1] Open at the top, open at the bottom and continually evolving, but slowly Boardman et al 2006 [17] The alphabet characteristics: autonomy, belonging, connectivity, diversity and emerging Boehm 2006 [18] Software-Intensive SoSs Cocks 2006 [39] An SoS may not be as much about the system mission, but about the architecture of the selected solution Fisher 2006 [63] Composition of autonomous systems is an SoS Sharawi et al 2006 [225] Independence, interoperabili...…”

“…From here the field saw an increase in both the industrial and academic research taking place. Based on the publications in the literature this increased during the 1990's reaching an all-time high midways in the first decade of the new millennium [128]. The field of SoS Engineering was not formally established until 2003 [127].…”

“…Although the "System of Systems" term has been appearing for more than five decades, the engineering of the field is still in its early stages. With an increased focus on the field there has been a rapid growth in research and it has created a voluminous literature [128]. This has led to a rich set of descriptions and SoS characteristics that makes use of a substantial vocabulary, but there is still a lack of a common ground for a definition and understanding of SoS.…”

“Fifty Shades of Agile”: AN ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES OF AGILE SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

“…Finally, we included S7 (system of systems) for completeness. As Kemp et al (2013) Mollett (2011) (2012) suggested the need for a range of SE approaches to work across a whole trade-space of different systems. In particular, they proposed three basic dimensions which drive the difficulty of systems development:…”

2.2.2 Maintaining Emergence in Systems of Systems Integration: a Contractual Approach using SysML

“…As reliance comes to be placed on the emergent behaviors that SoSs deliver, successful systems engineering demands methods and tools that allow this reliance to be justified. Consequently, although SoSs are not themselves new, there has been a marked growth of interest in the potential of SoS engineering (Kemp et al 2013). The systems engineer working in an SoS environment faces important challenges, not only in SoS development, but in the long term, as the CSs evolve, possibly quite independently of the SoS itself (Boardman andSauser 2006, INCOSE 2011).…”