Systems of Systems Engineering

Abstract

The term “System of Systems” (SoS) has been used since the 1950s to describe systems that are composed of independent constituent systems, which act jointly towards a common goal through the synergism between them. Examples of SoS arise in areas such as power grid technology, transport, production, and military enterprises. SoS engineering is challenged by the independence, heterogeneity, evolution, and emergence properties found in SoS. This article focuses on the role of model-based techniques within the SoS engineering field. A review of existing attempts to define and classify SoS is used to identify several dimensions that characterise SoS applications. The SoS field is exemplified by a series of representative systems selected from the literature on SoS applications. Within the area of model-based techniques the survey specifically reviews the state of the art for SoS modelling, architectural description, simulation, verification, and testing. Finally, the identified dimensions of SoS characteristics are used to identify research challenges and future research areas of model-based SoS engineering.

The user-centred intelligent environments development process as a guide to co-create smart technology for people with special needs

“…According to Nielsen et al [19], it is primordial to identify the boundaries of the overall SoS and of the independent constituent systems within it. These boundaries relate to both technical aspects such as interfaces, integration and testing, and management aspects such as governance and stakeholder involvement.…”

Systems of systems: From mission definition to architecture description

“…As might be envisaged in an emerging field, there does not exist unifying definition of SoS. The several definitions of SoS have their own merits, depending on their application domain . To bind the field precisely without considering any application domain, Maier characterized SoS in terms of five principal features: “operational independence, managerial independence, geographic distribution, evolutionary development, and emergent behavior.”…”

“…. It is in the same time part of the disaster response system of systems, which is a widely used example of SoS . This SoS is aimed at developing an integrated crowd control system during temporary events of mass transit, such as sports events or political meetings.…”

“…This problem concerns only the consistency of the information transmitted from the requirement stage to the design stage. However, in the case of SoS, whose nature inherently involves evolution, the consistency of the choices made for the evolution needs with the initial capability objectives must be verified. The evolutions of an SoS can occur far in time, which means that some or all of the initial stakeholders may no longer be present.…”

Capturing smart service systems: Development of a domain‐specific modelling language

“…Nested structures of service systems are also referred to as composed service systems in service research (Maglio et al, 2009) and as systems of systems in the IoT domain (Porter & Heppelmann, 2014). They enable novel value propositions by pooling resources and leveraging synergies (Nielsen, Larsen, Fitzgerald, Woodcock, & Peleska, 2015;Porter & Heppelmann, 2014). At the same time, the diversity of resources and potentially competing priorities make it hard to manage nested service systems (Becker, Beverungen, Knackstedt, Matzner, Müller, & Pöppelbuß, 2013;Nielsen et al, 2015).…”