by Werner Steinhögl, Programme Officer at the European Commission, Components and Systems, Directorate General CONNECT

In our modern world, with all aspects of our lives becoming increasingly digitalized, Systems of Systems will play a crucial role. As the embedded world meets the Internet world there will be an increasing number of interacting systems with strong connectivity in both society and in industry. The growing overall complexity of systems has triggered a paradigm shift and the need to enhance the classical view of Systems Engineering towards Systems of Systems (SoS) Engineering. SoS describes the large scale and dynamically varying integration of many independent, self-contained systems to satisfy needs for services that can only be provided by the system as a whole. Examples of SoS include the electrical grid, a large processing plant with many process units, multi-modal traffic control, and combined heat and power generation.