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Systems
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Governance of System of Systems (SoS)
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Governance of System of Systems (SoS)

A special issue of Systems (ISSN 2079-8954). This special issue belongs to the section "Systems Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2026 | Viewed by 1915

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Polinpapilinho Katina

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Informatics and Engineering Systems, University of South Carolina Upstate, Spartanburg, SC 29303, USA
Interests: AI; blockchain; complex system governance; engineering management; Industry 5.0; IoT; risk management; sustainability
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Chuck Keating

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Director, National Centers for System of Systems Engineering, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA
Interests: complex system governance; system of systems engineering; systems engineering; management cybernetics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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.

Keywords

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

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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29 pages, 1944 KB  
Article
Towards Governance of Socio-Technical System of Systems: Leveraging Lessons from Proven Engineering Principles
by Mohamed Mogahed and Mo Mansouri
Systems 2025, 13(12), 1113; https://doi.org/10.3390/systems13121113 - 10 Dec 2025
Viewed by 436
Abstract
Healthcare delivery systems operate as complex socio-technical Systems-of-Systems (SoS), where autonomous entities—hospitals, insurers, laboratories, and technology vendors—must coordinate to achieve collective outcomes that exceed individual capabilities. Despite substantial investment in interoperability standards and regulatory frameworks, persistent fragmentation undermines care quality, operational efficiency, and [...] Read more.
Healthcare delivery systems operate as complex socio-technical Systems-of-Systems (SoS), where autonomous entities—hospitals, insurers, laboratories, and technology vendors—must coordinate to achieve collective outcomes that exceed individual capabilities. Despite substantial investment in interoperability standards and regulatory frameworks, persistent fragmentation undermines care quality, operational efficiency, and systemic adaptability. This fragmentation stems from a fundamental governance paradox: how can independent systems retain operational autonomy while adhering to shared rules that ensure systemic resilience? This paper addresses this challenge by advancing a governance-oriented architecture grounded in Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) principles. We reinterpret core OOP constructs—encapsulation, modularity, inheritance, polymorphism, and interface definition—as governance mechanisms that enable autonomy through principled constraints while fostering structured coordination across heterogeneous systems. Central to this framework is the Confluence Interoperability Covenant (CIC), a socio-technical governance artifact that functions as an adaptive interface mechanism, codifying integrated legal, procedural, and technical standards without dictating internal system architectures. To validate this approach, we develop a functional proof-of-concept simulation using Petri Nets, modeling constituent healthcare systems as autonomous entities interacting through CIC-governed transitions. Comparative simulation results demonstrate that CIC-based governance significantly reduces fragmentation (from 0.8077 to 0.1538) while increasing successful interactions fivefold (from 68 to 339 over 400 steps). This work contributes foundational principles for SoS Engineering and offers practical guidance for designing scalable, interoperable governance architectures in mission-critical socio-technical domains. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Governance of System of Systems (SoS))
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Review

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22 pages, 3516 KB  
Review
Federal–State Perspective Desalignment as an Emerging Meta-System Pathology in U.S. Climate Governance: A Conceptual Framework, Implications, and Recommendations
by Anouar Hallioui, Nicola Pedroni, Polinpapilinho F. Katina and Marcelo Masera
Systems 2025, 13(11), 966; https://doi.org/10.3390/systems13110966 - 30 Oct 2025
Viewed by 1077
Abstract
Polycentric governance enables decentralized yet coherent multilevel decision-making by fostering alignment across governance, policy, and strategic goals. In the United States (U.S.), a prominent global climate actor, this polycentric structure is being tested. An Executive Order issued on 8 April 2025, opens the [...] Read more.
Polycentric governance enables decentralized yet coherent multilevel decision-making by fostering alignment across governance, policy, and strategic goals. In the United States (U.S.), a prominent global climate actor, this polycentric structure is being tested. An Executive Order issued on 8 April 2025, opens the possibility to stop the enforcement of state-level laws that might condition the exploitation of energy resources based on considerations concerning climate change and the environment. This federal action might disrupt subnational efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate impacts, exposing a misalignment between federal and state climate governance—a dynamic that remains underexplored in the existing literature. This critical mini-review article proposes a novel conceptual framework that presents this misalignment between federal and state climate perspectives as an emerging meta-system pathology in U.S. climate governance, introducing the concept of perspective desalignment. Drawing on the analysis of 73 Web of Science papers and a review of 16 journal articles published in 2018–2025, this study highlights the breakdown of shared understanding and strategic coherence among key stakeholders, including federal and state governments, industry, and academia. The findings underscore that any effective climate governance will require federal–state realignment. The paper concludes with implications and recommendations for restoring alignment and enabling more effective, collaborative climate governance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Governance of System of Systems (SoS))
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