Governance of System of Systems (SoS)

Dear Colleagues,

The advent of advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, Industry 5.0, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) has fundamentally shifted the System of Systems (SoS) landscape. This shift has amplified the need for enhancements in System of Systems Engineering (SoSE) governance to provide direction, oversight, and accountability for increasingly complex and integrated systems.

This Special Issue invites papers to explore current and future challenges, issues, and advances in governing the SoS. The SoSE landscape has significantly evolved since its inception in the mid-1990s. SoSE has evolved from a primarily technology-centric focus to encompass a range of other considerations, including organizational, managerial, human, social, political, policy, and economic factors. The rapid pace of innovations, once on the horizon, is now integral to SoSE, demanding new approaches to governance that appreciate the increasing complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty, and contextual influences that shape the modern SoS.

New challenges continue to emerge in the governance and management of increasingly complex, interconnected, and dynamic SoS. The SoS landscape is being fundamentally reshaped, amplifying the need for enhancements in governance. To explore present and future governance needs for the SoS, we welcome contributions that propose novel thinking, methodologies, tools, processes, and applications for effective SoS governance. Papers that consider a broader range of factors in SoS governance, beyond technology, such as human, social, organizational, managerial, policy, and political considerations, are invited.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Novel frameworks and methods for governing complex SoS;
• Managing ambiguity and uncertainty in SoS governance;
• Approaches for integrating human, social, organizational, managerial, political, and policy considerations into SoS;
• Methods for analyzing and adapting to contextual influences on SoS;
• Emerging advanced research on topics in SoS governance, such as resilience, uncertainty, control, identity, communication, and ethics;
• Mapping, modeling, and representation for governance in SoS;
• Performance measurement for governance;
• Advanced diagnostics and assessment methods;
• Architecture for governance of SoS;
• Systems theory and systems thinking in governance;
• Environmental scanning for SoS governance;
• SoS governance intervention and transformation;
• Diagnostic methods and considerations for the discovery of governance maturity levels and deficiencies in SoS;
• Innovative applications of emerging technologies in SoS governance;
• Methods for managing complexity and failure in SoS;
• Governance frameworks for integrating diverse SoS and stakeholders;
• Holistic approaches to the design, deployment, and maintenance of SoS governance;
• The evolution of SoS governance theory and practice to address modern challenges.

We welcome original research, case studies, and critical reviews that contribute to the advancement of governance for SoS.

Dr. Polinpapilinho Katina
Prof. Dr. Chuck Keating
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Systems is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• governance
• SoS
• SoSE
• System of Systems Engineering
• System of Systems
• uncertainty
• vulnerability
• complexity