Author(s)
Warren K. Vaneman and Kostas Triantis
Abstract
System of Systems (SoS) have been increasingly employed to satisfy operational goals and objectives. Often when a SoS is assembled, little analytical consideration is given to the SoS performance. Instead, decision-makers often rely on antidotal evidence to forecast the expected SoS performance. This approach ignores the emergent behavior of the SoS. While emergence can assume many aspects of SoS performance, one perspective that is most overlooked is resiliency, or the ability to adapt to changing conditions and prepare for, withstand, and rapidly recover from a disruption.
This paper explores resiliency as an emergent behavior of a SoS from a system dynamics perspective. As a result of this model-based approach, SoS performance can be evaluated as disturbances are introduced to the SoS, and forecast how the SoS will recover to a steady-state. Furthermore, this paper will introduce a methodological approach that will identify the key nodes that can be changed during the design process, or through policy, that will increase SoS performance through resiliency.