Assessing the impact of disruptions and dependencies in System-of-Systems

Principal Investigator: Dan DeLaurentis

In this recently completed project, we developed an SoS Analytic Work Bench, with tools that address issues of performance and risk. More specifically, the analytical tools account for the complex and highly interconnected nature of constituent systems that make up the overall SoS, and allows users to (1) quantify performance and risk for individual systems, links and of overall SoS, both in nominal case and when disruptions or attacks occur (2) assess impact that topology and SoS architecture have on robustness to attacks and prevention of their effect and (3) quantitatively identify optimal sets of architectural solutions given constraints on performance, robustness and risk. The challenge in supporting decision-making in SoS environment is that such tools must address technical and programmatic complexities, and yet remain domain agnostic. Our research has focused on a multi-pronged quantitative approach that leverages computational methods, tailored specifically towards addressing the complex technical dimensions that practitioners may face in analyzing SoS evolutionary actions and a wide range of possible disruptions.

Keywords: dependencies, propagation, System-of-Systems