A Conceptual Model for the Information Transfer in Systems-of-Systems

A system-of-systems (SoS) is a large information processing system formed by the integration of autonomous computer systems, physical systems and humans for the purpose of providing new synergistic services and/or more efficient economic processes. The integration is achieved by the exchange of information among the constituent systems. In a monolithic system, where a single context for the representation of information prevails, the issue of context dependence of information representation is of little concern. With the advent of SoSs the context dependence of the information representation in the diverse constituent systems becomes a central issue that must be dealt with by a proper conceptual model. In this paper we present such a conceptual model for the information transfer in a system-of-systems that takes account of the dissimilar representations of the same semantic content in the diverse constituent systems. We introduce the key concept of an Information Atom, called Itom that comprises data and an explanation of the data in an atomic unit. Depending on the context of interpretation, the representation of the data and the explanation may change, while the semantic content, the information carried by an Itom must remain invariant. In the second part of the paper we focus on the impact of the progression of real-time on the utility of information.