Design of a web-based thesaurus for Systems of Systems Engineering

Design of a web-based thesaurus for Systems of Systems Engineering (SoSE) discipline is presented in this article. Due to lack of linguistic clarity within this emerging discipline, there is a strong need to represent and interpret SoS concepts and terms to align heterogeneous models, and tools and techniques developed for SoS operations, management and its governance. A Blackboard-based systems approach is therefore used to devise a model, providing a mechanism for high level organisation and sharing of knowledge and information within the SoSE thesaurus system. To illustrate its applicability, a scenario derived from realistic use cases is provided. The potential benefits of this research are identified and a brief description of intended further work is given.