Systems Engineering for the Digital Age

Chapter 29System of Systems Analytic Workbench

Cesare Guariniello¹, Payuna Uday², Waterloo Tsutsui¹ and Karen Marais¹

¹ School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

² Stevens Institute of Technology, Systems Engineering Research Center, Hoboken, NJ, USA

Genesis and Description of the Analytic Workbench

Evolving and refining large groups of interdependently operating systems, or systems of systems (SoS), present significant technical, operational, and programmatic challenges. SoS generally involve integrating multiple independently managed systems to achieve a unique capability, therefore requiring collaboration and negotiation as well as control. In such complex systems, human behavioral and social phenomena in collaboration are critical to proper functionality, as are cascading impacts from interdependencies; altogether, emergent outcomes are the norm. Handling situations characterized by the presence of cascading impacts and emergent behavior goes well beyond the immediate mental faculties of decision‐makers and even capabilities of existing system‐level decision‐support tools. The current cutting edge in analysis for SoS seeks a collection of methods, processes, and tools that provides SoS practitioners with meaningful quantitative insights into projected SoS behavior and the possibilities for evolving the SoS. Policies set forth in the last few years in acquisition guidance documents, emerging SoS standards, and informal guidance, such ...