Managing large and complex systems with Omnispective Analysis and Reasoning
Date
2012
Authors
Chemboli, Srinivas
Boughton, Clive
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Engineers Australia
Abstract
Development of newer and more sustainable systems requires a thorough understanding of
the complex interactions in current systems. Therefore it is necessary to be able to switch between detailed knowledge of component systems and an overall appraisal of the entire system. Current efforts to develop ontologies capturing a "complete" and "universal" understanding of entire systems of systems often result in loss of depth and precision of knowledge contained in the participating systems. This further adds to the uncertainty and intractability in the management of the complex system. In addition, the absence of a single control and execution context makes it difficult to validate the system against desired
intent and goals. All of these increase the likelihood of cost, effort and development time overruns in maintaining, enhancing, retiring and replacing systems.
In this paper, we propose a novel approach to address these concerns by the application of Omnispective Analysis and Reasoning (OAR), an epistemic framework for managing intellectual concerns. By creating "localized ontologies" for capturing the ’silos’ of knowledge in component systems, we develop artifacts for only those concerns from the participating domains that are identified as relevant. These localized ontologies can unambiguously capture all relevant system artifacts with valuable information about their context of application within the system. With the OAR framework, we can analyze and manage large
systems as an aggregation of all these localized ontologies with explicit specification of mutual interactions and influence at the concept, model and implementation levels. This omnispective outlook will not only enable better management of the system development lifecycle by taking into account details of individual subsystems and their interactions, but also facilitate validation and verification of the system. We illustrate this with an example from the Ubuntu software ecosystem.
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Keywords
complex systems, Omnispective Analysis and Reasoning, context, localized ontologies
Citation
Chemboli, S. & Boughton, C. (April-May 2012). Managing large and complex systems with Omnispective Analysis and Reasoning. Paper presented at the Systems Engineering, Test and Evaluation Conference of The Systems Engineering Society of Australia (SESA) and The Southern Cross Chapter of The International Test and Evaluation Association (ITEA) and INCOSE Region VI Incorporating the 6th Asia Pacific Conference on Systems Engineering (APSEC 2012) 30 April - 2 May 2012, Brisbane, Qld.
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