Systems of Systems (SoS) are networks of systems that by operating together has added capabilities. The response of these SoS to unexpected constituent system failures, however, undermines their effectiveness. One approach to increase SoS performance is to increase the SoS’s hard (physical design) or soft (human intervention) Resilience. The requirements on human response and cost increase non-linearly with SoS Scale, however. These limitations require a novel approach to improve resilience. We hypothesize that biologically-inspired network design can improve SoS resilience. A systems dynamics model of a Forestry Industry is presented and an optimization search over potential hard and soft resilience approaches is compared to a bio-inspired network improvement. SoS resilience is measured through the newly developed SoSRM. Results provide evidence that bio-inspired network design provides an approach to increase SoS resilience beyond hard and soft resilience improvements alone (SoSRM increased from .922 to .926). Secondly, this work provides evidence that incorporating detrital actors increases SoS resilience (SoSRM increased from .909 to .926). Third, this paper documents the first case study using the new SoSRM metric to justify a design decision. Finally, this case study provides a counter-example to the theory that increased sustainability always results in increased resilience.


Systems of Systems Engineering to Improve Resilience: A Case Study Comparison of Biologically Inspired and Traditional Approaches

Division / Sponsors: 
Design Engineering Division and Computers & Information In Engineering Division


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IDETC-CIE/IDETC-CIE2020/volume/83907

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