Towards an Ontology of SoS Interoperability: Proposition of a SoS Interoperability Framework and a SoS Conceptual Interoperability Model

Abstract

Systems engineering is currently evolving to extend beyond the scope of a single system. Recently, the increasing number of interacting systems in society and industry generated a growing interest in a class of complex systems, called Systems of Systems (SoS), whose components are complex and independent. There is a growing interest for the creation of synergies between these component systems to achieve the desired performance of the overall system (SoS). The SoS approach is intended to build and analyze complex, independent and heterogeneous systems working (or designed to work) in cooperation. The SoS concept presents a high level perspective that explains the interactions between the independent systems. In the context of SoS engineering, interoperability is one of the most challenging problems. The aim of this paper is to present an interoperability framework and a conceptual model to formally structure knowledge about SoS Engineering and build an Ontology of SoS Interoperability (OoSoSI).