A New SoS Engineering Philosophy - Vitality Theory

As engineered systems increase their complexities, a new engineering nature of Systems of System (SoS) vitality is proposed aiming for a development trend from systems to self-adaption and self-recovery Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) in its adaptability to dynamic environmental changes. In terms of engineered system formalisms, an inorganic engineered system is transformed into a SoS composition with the characteristics of an organic lifeform, becoming a self-adaptive agent. Regarding to a way for constructing an engineering SoS, a traditional engineered system process model emerges in a new challenge with the addition of a virtual system in cyber space. In this paper, by analogy with the organic characteristics of living systems in nature, SoS vitality theory is proposed, which includes a technical framework and maturity level model for measuring the organic characteristics of engineering SoS for current technological development. This provides a conceptual reference for future directions in the development of engineered systems.