System of Systems (SoS) Engineering & Architecture Challenges in a Net Centric Environment

In traditional Systems Engineering, the Systems Engineer acts as the overall system creator. Primarily through stakeholder interaction, requirements analysis, and architectural design, the Systems Engineering shapes and influences the system solution through specifications, top-down design, and bottoms-up integration and test. With the large-scale introduction of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components, the Systems Engineer acts more like a composer. The top-down requirements and design activities need to be adjusted to account for the bottoms-up constraints imposed by the COTS technology. The System Engineer shapes and influences COTS-based developments through requirements modifications and negotiations, along with simultaneous system design, integration, and test. This paper explores the changing role of the Systems Engineer in today's complex system of systems (SoS) environment. We will use the analogies of conductor and choreographer to describe the System Engineering leadership challenges that exist in a SoS environment. Similar to a conductor, we will look at the set of activities that ensure the elements in the SoS work together in harmony. Similar to a choreographer, we will look at the set of activities that ensure the expressive nature of each of the SoS elements is fully realized, while still conforming to its overall objectives. Using these analogies, we will draw some conclusions for the evolving Systems Engineering role in a SoS environment. We will also explore which of these activities emerge as dominant in situations both with and without a lead SoS integrator.

This paper is concerned with the engineering of systems that are themselves comprised of other component systems, and where each of the component systems serves organizational and human purposes.i¾ i¾ These component purposes may be locally managed and optimized independently, or nearly so, of the objectives to be met by the composite system.i¾ i¾ There are a number of inherent characteristics of these systems, and such related terms as systems of systems (SOS) or federations of systems (FOS) or federated systems of systems (F-SOS) are often used to characterize them.i¾ i¾ It is asserted that the resultant systems generally possess the characteristics of complex adaptive systems.i¾ i¾ We provide an overview of the literature describing these engineering efforts and provide plausible strategies for systems engineering and management of SOS and FOS that are based on the principles of a 'new federalism'.i¾ i¾ Finally, the implications of these plausible SOS and FOS systems engineering and management concepts are discussed with emphasis on evolutionary acquisition in the style of DoD and Intelligence Community related programs.

This article describes the emerging roles of the systems engineering (SE) function in supporting enterprise management in information‐intensive organizations. “Enterprise Systems Engineering” (ESE) comprises three major roles or “levels” of systems engineering for successful and efficient development or procurement of large complex systems of systems (SoS). While the authors' experience focuses predominantly on government organizations acting as their own SoS integrators, the SoS ESE concept has generic applicability for any organization, public or private, seeking to attain competitive advantage through leveraging of information technology resources and systems. The processes and tools described here have been developed and successfully employed to facilitate government project management and investment decisions and control. [Carlock and Decker, 1998] This paper describes a formal three‐level SoS ESE process that, at the top level, organizes and maintains all of the details of the enterprise‐wide SoS architecture and strategic development plan in a flexible framework that accommodates the changes expected over a long SoS evolution. The information maintained in this framework allows the organization to know where it is going, how and when it is going to get there, the required capabilities and interfaces of each SoS component, and the impact of changes to system requirements, budgets, schedules, etc., on the overall SoS. The middle level processes allow the organization to perform trade studies among alternative solutions to implement required capabilities based on what is best for the enterprise‐wide SoS rather than just local considerations. The end result of the middle level processes is a selected and approved solution and its associated cost, schedule, benefits, and technical baselines. The third level processes implement the approved solutions in accordance with the approved baselines. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Syst Eng 4: 242–261, 2001

Systems of Systems (SoS) modeling is becoming increasingly important in both civilian and military systems. The Department of Defense (DoD) Defense Acquisition Guidebook, [1] defines a SoS as a “set or arrangement of systems that results when independent and useful systems are integrated into a larger system that delivers unique capabilities.” Organizations are changing their emphasis from “We need a new system” to “We need to achieve a specific outcome.” As these outcomes become more complex and the associated systems more complex, the management, modeling and simulation of these SoS becomes equally challenging. Often, the SoS is modeled in all its complexity, often at a single level of abstraction or level of detail. Instead of a “megamodel” approach, a standards-based “model of models” approach is what is necessary. This approach will use the Object Management Group (OMG) Unified Profile for DoDAF and MODAF (UPDM) for modeling enterprise architectures from capabilities to detailed components, and the Reusable Asset Specification (RAS) for defining reusable assets. Combining UPDM and RAS provides a Model of Models approach with the main model specifying assets in various levels of details. The models specified by these assets can be referenced when detailed analysis is required, or hidden when a SoS viewpoint is required, allowing the analyst to see the forest through the trees. The paper will also include an assessment of the applicability and effectiveness of this approach. The International Conference on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) System of Systems Working Group (SoSWG) has collected a set of “Pain Points on SoS” from a variety of international sources. This paper will review these pain points and discuss how the application of a Model of Model approach, combined with standards-based modeling tools and a reusable assets approach can help to alleviate some of the pain currently being felt by SoS architects and managers. Hopefully, this response to their SOS will deliver some much-needed assistance.

This describes a system of systems (SoS) systems engineering (SE) artifacts, compares and contrasts them with similar ones developed and used for individual systems, and explains how they are used to guide SoS engineering processes. This concludes with next steps for using SoS artifacts to continue maturing the understanding of SoS SE in an international cooperative effort with the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

Model-based approaches such as Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) are widely regarded as a necessity to enable and support the development of ever more complex Systems of Systems (SoS). A key to the application of model-based development approaches in companies is the introduction of systems engineering architecture frameworks (SEAF) to structure the models of systems to be developed. This paper displays the research to develop a SEAF for SoS. Through workshops and interviews with 18 partners from industry and research, we derived perspectives to be considered for describing and modeling SoS. By analyzing existing SEAFs from literature we concluded, that not all perspectives we identified as relevant are covered by a single framework. Based on our research, especially the explicit consideration of SoS characteristics such as autonomy and interdependence, the integrated consideration of product, production system and validation system development, as well as consideration of different product generations and (re-)use of models appears to be not profoundly addressed. Advancing the state of research, we therefore propose a six-dimensional SoS engineering architecture framework to cover all perspectives we identified as relevant. The proposed framework can further serve as a reference for developers to derive and build specific frameworks tailored to their needs while at the same time supporting consistency, reusability and compatibility of the specific frameworks. The presented framework is an initial proposition which continuously being used and evaluated by its application to structure modeling for a variety of real systems from different industries. Insights from the application are fed back for its further development.

SApHESIA: An agent-based model and a criticality-based heuristic for cooperatively coupling SoSs

A System of Systems (SoS) is a term used to describe independent systems converging for a purpose that could only be carried out through this interdependent collaboration. Many examples of SoSs exist, but the term has become a source of confusion across domains. Moreover, there are few illustrative SoS examples demonstrating their initial classification and structure. While there are many approaches for engineering of systems, less exist for SoS engineering. More specifically, there is a research gap towards approaches addressing SoS security risk assessment for engineering and operational needs, with a need for tool-support to assist modelling and visualising security risk and requirements in an interconnected SoS. From this, security requirements can provide a systematic means to identify constraints and related risks of the SoS, mitigated by human-user and system requirements. This work investigates specific challenges and current approaches for SoS security and risk, and aims to identify the alignment of SoS factors and concepts suitable for eliciting, analysing, validating risks with use of a tool-support for assessing security risk in the SoS context.

In this article, we model the two most market-capitalised public, open and permissionless blockchain implementations, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), as a System of Systems (SoS) of public blockchains. We study the concepts of blockchain, BTC, ETH, complex networks, SoS Engineering and intentional risk. We analyse BTC and ETH from an open SoS perspective through the main properties that seminal System of Systems Engineering (SoSE) references propose. This article demonstrates that these public blockchain implementations create networks that grow in complexity and connect with each other. We propose a methodology based on a complexity management lever such as SoSE to better understand public blockchains such as BTC and ETH and manage their evolution. Our ultimate objective is to improve the resilience of public blockchains against intentional risk: a key requirement for their mass adoption. We conclude with specific measures, based on this novel systems engineering approach, to effectively improve the resilience against intentional risk of the open SoS of public blockchains, composed of a non-inflationary money system, “sound money”, such as BTC, and of a world financial computer system, “a financial conduit”, such as ETH. The goal of this paper is to formulate a SoS that transfers digital value and aspires to position itself as a distributed alternative to the fiat currency-based financial system.

In the twenty-first century, mission success will require unprecedented interoperability among disparate constituent systems resulting in a System of Systems (SoS). Unlike traditional systems engineering where systems are created based on a set of user needs, a SoS is composed of multiple constituent systems, at various stages within their lifecycles (i.e. new start systems, systems in-development, legacy systems), to satisfy needed mission capabilities. System of Systems Engineering has been exploring appropriate methods and processes for almost two decades. This paper takes the discussion further by introducing a System of Systems Engineering and Integration (SOSE&I) methodology. SoSE&I is the planning, analyzing, and integrating of constituent systems into an SoS capability greater than the sum of those individual systems. The SoSE&I "Vee" process model is introduced and discusses how it is used to engineer the SoS throughout its lifecycle to increase systems integration and interoperability, and directly impact the operational success.

SummaryModeling and simulation play a major role in complex system engineering. In Systems of Systems (SoS) engineering, a special case of complex systems engineering, they help to better understand and identify the side effects associated with the integration of autonomous constituent systems. Simulation is also a way of apprehending the emerging behaviors from this integration. The dynamic and evolving nature of the SoS environment has led us to rely on their most stable part to define them, namely their mission. In this paper, we propose a simulation framework for SoS based on a mission conceptual model. Mission is defined as a set of situations that require reactions. Situations are defined by rules on facts related to the SoS environment. Reactions are defined as orchestrations of services from constituent systems (subsystems) that must be triggered when a situation is identified. We present this simulation approach through a case study on a Telediabet SoS.

Terrain and weather effects represent fundamental battlefield information supporting situation awareness and the decision-making processes for Net Centric operations. Sensor information can have a greater impact when placed within a terrain and weather contextual framework. Realizing the promised potential of Net Centric operations is challenging with respect to these effects, since these effects can both enhance or constrain force tactics and behaviors, platform performance (ground and air), system performance (e.g. sensors) and the soldier. We have defined a methodology that starts with military objectives and determines the most useful terrain products to support these missions, taking into account weather effects and sensors. From this methodology we have designed a number of technical standards and components. A key standard is geospatial Battle Management Language (geoBML) to represent Mission input to Geospatial and Sensor Products. An example of components for creating these products are those in the Battlespace Terrain Reasoning and Awareness (BTRA) system. These standards and components enable interoperability between force elements that address not only syntactic consistency, but consistency of both a lexical and semantic representation to realize shared, coherent awareness. This paper presents a systemic approach for successful resolution of these challenges and describes an Actionable Geo-environmental Information Framework (AGeIF).

The infusion of engineering (CogE) methods and tools into traditional systems engineering processes and practices is becoming an important priority as the systems engineering community begins to tackle system of systems (SoS) problems. As one illustration, the military is interested in creating cognitively-inspired systems (as small as a PDA and as large as a weapon platform) that maximally exploit human potential while also accelerating both human supported and automated decision making. To date, engineering has been successfully applied to the planning and requirements definition phases of systems engineering (also known as front-end analysis) but has yet to be infused into the remaining phases of systems engineering. To span the full systems engineering lifecycle, it is important, first and foremost, to communicate the return-on-investment to the various stakeholders to get their buy in. The second question that needs to be answered is whether or not cognitive engineering is ready for primetime. This paper presents promising technical and management strategies to overcome the challenges in introducing engineering into system-of-systems engineering (SOSE). Specifically, it presents a representative set of engineering methods and tools to span the full SoS life-cycle as well as engineering awareness initiatives to penetrate both the DoD acquisition community and commercial industry.

Top-down decomposition of a complex system of systems (SoS) requires representation of the behavior of multiple individuals and cyber-physical systems performing a wide variety of tasks, usually at different times and with different goals. In the future, as humans and machines learn and co-adapt in their mission context, systems engineering must develop approaches that support dynamic analysis and synthesis in both the design and operation of systems. The concept of a “digital (mission) twin” provides an integration framework for design and control of future complex cyber-physical-human SoS. The framework builds on mission function task (MFT) analysis, providing a basis for model-based systems engineering (MBSE) activities to identify and address needs for automation or other forms of advanced technology that improve overall system performance. However, human-driven adaptation and eventually machine adaptation of complex SoS poses organizational and methodological challenges. We discuss the need for and opportunities for convergence of three often segregated SE methodologies: product engineering, human systems integration, and mission/operations analysis by expanding the product or process engineering view of a digital twin to the mission level. In the present this gives us a framework to analyze and specify automation and adaptation opportunities at the mission level. In the future we envision this twin continuously operates with the real systems to manage both emergent mission conditions and lifecycle adaptation. We applied this framework to a complex military mission using a case where artificial intelligence can be incorporated widely across a set of mission tasks to significantly improve performance.

The exploration of Systems of Systems (SoS) modeling using Model‐Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is an ongoing area of research, wherein researchers are actively investigating various frameworks and languages suitable for initiating SoS modeling. Urban Air Mobility (UAM) represents a novel approach to urban transportation, integrating multiple systems and stakeholders to enable on‐demand, environment friendly, efficient, and sustainable air travel within cities. International organizations have dedicated significant efforts to develop a comprehensive Concept of Operation (ConOps) for UAM, aiming to define the UAM ecosystem and identify the supporting systems. While previous research was focused on defining the Urban Air System (UAS) using Systems Modeling Language (SysML), there remains a gap in capturing the ConOps for UAM as a System of Systems (SoS) using SysML. This study seeks to address this gap by utilizing the MagicGrid Framework for SoS modeling.