[437937/2018-6] A Design Methodology for System-of-Systems aligned with Business Processes and Decisions

National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) - 2018-2021

Emerging systems like wearable device environments, mobile apps, and sensors networks have been transforming the way of organizations and communities carry out their business processes and decision-making. These systems when designed as constituent systems within a System-of-Systems (SoS) present new and unique features that cannot be provided by any individual system separately. This may expand the comprehension of variables and thus enhance business analysis. However, the heterogeneity and managerial independence of the constituent systems pose challenges when modeling, designing and developing a SoS. They have their own prerequisites, architectures, and used technologies that might not be flexible to changes or even more may diverge to the overall SoS. Moreover, a SoS often provides information and/or features that do not match target-users' needs, which in turn could hamper business tasks and decisions. Therefore, this project proposal will develop a methodology that designs SoSs more aligned with business processes by understanding the bridging elements among them and how they can be handled. This methodology will be built on two elements: (a) an architectural design process that guides the design of a SoS architecture and (b) a model that handles emerging behavior of SoS by matching its functionalities to characteristics of business activities. These elements will be established and evaluated in interactive design and analysis cycles, taking as a case study the context of monitoring environmental variables within a Brazilian early-warning center. Results expected from this project include both the methodology's elements and lessons earned from their employment in both experimental evaluations and a real-world case study. Together, these contributions comprise valuable contributions to practice and research on the design, development, and evaluation of SoS more aligned with organizations' processes and decisions.

Project Investigators
  • Flávio Horita (UFABC) - Principal Investigator
  • Donna Rhodes (MIT/US)
  • Bernd Hellingrath (WWU-Münster/Germany)
  • Rodrigo Santos (UNIRIO)
  • Everton Cavalcante (UFRN)
  • Valdemar Graciano Neto (UFG)
  • Leonardo Bacelar (CEMADEN)
Project Publications
  • Horita, F. E. A., Rhodes, D. H., Inocêncio, T. J., Gonzales, G. R., Building a conceptual architecture and stakeholder map of a system-of-systems for disaster monitoring and early-warning: A case study in Brazil, Proceedings of the XV Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems (SBSI), 2019, https://doi.org/10.1145/3330204.3330215
  • Inocêncio, T. J. , Gonzales, G. R., Cavalcante, E., Horita, F. , Emergent Behavior in System-of-Systems: A Systematic Mapping Study, Proceedings of the XXXIII Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering (SBES), 2019, https://doi.org/10.1145/3350768.3350779
  • Kimura, W. T., Horita, F., Alves, A., Influence of digital transformation on the institutionalization of agile methods, Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Information Systems in Latin America (ISLA), 2020, https://aisel.aisnet.org/isla2020/24/
  • Horita, F., Baptista, J., De Albuquerque, J. P., Exploring the use of IoT Data for Heightened Situational Awareness in Centralised Monitoring Control Rooms, Information Systems Frontiers, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-020-10075-8