Complexity Challenges in Cyber Physical Systems

6Model‐Based Systems of Systems Engineering Trade‐off Analytics

Aleksandra Markina‐Khusid, Ryan Jacobs, and Judith Dahmann

The MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA, USA

6.1 Introduction

Increasingly today's societal capabilities are based on compositions of systems and system elements to provide the aggregate functionality needed to meet challenges across multiple domains. As these composite systems expand and adapt, their inherent complexity poses challenges for application of systems engineering methods which have been the hallmark of the discipline. Core to systems engineering is trade‐off analysis – use of objective methods to assess alternatives to system architectures and to system components with respect to the system objectives. The systems engineering community has recognized that success of many of today's enterprises depends on our ability to effectively reason about and harness Systems of Systems (SoS) capabilities increasing the importance of addressing these challenges. This paper begins with a review of the relationships between systems of systems (SoS) and other composed systems, cyber‐physical systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT). Recognizing that CPS represent a class of SoS and as such can utilize the rich body of knowledge provided by SoSE, it explores the challenges in conducting trade‐off analysis for SoS. The chapter then presents a set of approaches that can help to address these challenges. In particular, the chapter addresses the application of model‐based ...