System of Systems Modeling and Analysis

5Network Theory

The 3-phase DAI process of SoSE begins with the definition phase during which we identify the resources which constitute the SoS. Along with the resources, we also identify collections of resources organized as networks at higher levels of the ROPE framework. During the following phase of abstraction, we further refine our representation of an SoS as a network to identify and represent the interactions among its resources. Indeed, the pursuit to identify and design an SoS’ emergent behaviors leads us to architect the structure of system interactions. This representation of an SoS as a network, with constituent systems as nodes and their interactions as links, comes from network theory, which offers a versatile and capable model ...