Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Complexity and fragility in system of systems

Complexity and fragility in system of systems SoS are an ensemble of complex systems, which have the potential for an extraordinary amount of structural complexity, even temporarily, as a result of interconnections and couplings that can vary in strength. Because of this, SoS can be vulnerable to sudden catastrophic collapse as a result of small and insignificant partial functionality losses in one of the constituent systems. This paper provides an analysis of the response SoS to uncertainties in the form of partial failures, which is complemented by the presentation of a measure of structural complexity for SoS. Experiments with the development of random graphs to simulate SoS show that a partial failure initiated in one system has a high possibility of leading to a collapse of another system of SoS, sometimes even before leading to total failure in the originating system. After pinpointing the effect of the complexity of today's system of systems (SoS), we present a first-step understanding of why unanticipated failures find more potential and more pathways to their occurrence when interventions in SoS operations, standards or processes are conducted without enough insight and without consideration of the fundamental nature of complexity. We then demonstrate a condition where the incremental changes actually lead http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png International Journal of System of Systems Engineering Inderscience Publishers

Complexity and fragility in system of systems

Download PDF
19 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/inderscience-publishers/complexity-and-fragility-in-system-of-systems-gg0OfO9mZt

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Inderscience Publishers
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
ISSN
1748-0671
eISSN
1748-068X
DOI
10.1504/IJSSE.2016.080323
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

SoS are an ensemble of complex systems, which have the potential for an extraordinary amount of structural complexity, even temporarily, as a result of interconnections and couplings that can vary in strength. Because of this, SoS can be vulnerable to sudden catastrophic collapse as a result of small and insignificant partial functionality losses in one of the constituent systems. This paper provides an analysis of the response SoS to uncertainties in the form of partial failures, which is complemented by the presentation of a measure of structural complexity for SoS. Experiments with the development of random graphs to simulate SoS show that a partial failure initiated in one system has a high possibility of leading to a collapse of another system of SoS, sometimes even before leading to total failure in the originating system. After pinpointing the effect of the complexity of today's system of systems (SoS), we present a first-step understanding of why unanticipated failures find more potential and more pathways to their occurrence when interventions in SoS operations, standards or processes are conducted without enough insight and without consideration of the fundamental nature of complexity. We then demonstrate a condition where the incremental changes actually lead

Journal

International Journal of System of Systems Engineering – Inderscience Publishers

Published: Jan 1, 2016

There are no references for this article.