Investigating and Quantifying Collaboration as a Performance Metric in Systems of Systems
Open Access DepositedSystems of systems (SoSs) engineering is a recent and rapidly expanding area of systems engineering as more SoSs are identified, studied, and developed in society. SoSs have an inherent level of complexity and characteristics that distinguish them from regular systems, which adds difficulty to designing, architecting, and operating SoSs. Collaboration is a defining attribute of SoSs that has been a difficult concept to model and quantify. The present research proposes collaboration rate as a measure of collaboration in SoSs and collects techniques from cooperative game theory together into an agent-based model (ABM) that quantifies SoS collaboration. The ABM is explored under a variety of parameters, where relationships between the strategy and utility of constituent system agents are observed. The cooperative game payoff structure defines the relationship between collaboration and SoS utility. Several domain-specific applications of the ABM are considered: evacuation dynamics, demand response programs, and communication network failure detection. Each utilizes the model in a specific fashion and outputs may be analyzed for characteristics of the SoS under study and implications for improving collaboration and utility. The simulation results of the model and application demonstrations show how collaboration is a core element of SoSs and study of collaboration yields potential benefits to stakeholders for improving performance of the SoS and constituent systems.
- All rights reserved
Notice to Authors
If you are the author of this work and you have any questions about the information on this page, please use the Contact form to get in touch with us.