A meta-model for representing system-of-systems ontologies

A System-of-Systems (SoS) is a large-scale complex system that integrates multiple constituent systems, which have managerial and operational independence. In order to achieve higher-level common goals of an SoS, it is important to systematically integrate independent constituent systems by thoroughly analyzing and designing the target SoS as a whole. But before conducting these engineering activities, a number of various SoS stakeholders and engineers should be able to understand their SoS. In order to provide a holistic view as a common knowledge base, this paper focuses on developing a conceptual meta-model that represents SoS ontologies. By investigating several documents for Mass Casualty Incident (MCI) response systems, we identified essential objects and required features for SoS descriptions. Based on the investigation, we generalized the objects into SoS entities, and we develop a meta-model, called M2SoS (Meta-model for System-of-Systems). To design our M2SoS , we borrowed organizational concepts from meta-models for multi-agent systems, and entities and relationships are redefined to specify SoS concepts in M2SoS. Finally, M2SoS is analyzed with respect to SoS characteristics, and we evaluate if M2SoS can represent high-level ontologies for two SoS case scenarios.