Systèmes-de-systèmes (Systems-of-Systems, SoS) sont des systèmes à logiciel prépondérant de grande échelle, complexes et souvent critiques dont l’importance n’a cessé de croître dans cette décennie. C’est le cas, par exemple, des SoS pour les réseaux intelligents d’énergie, les transports multimodaux et les villes intelligentes. On retrouve les SoS dans des domaines d’application très variés tels que l’environnement, le transport, l’énergie, la santé, l’aérospatiale, l’aéronautique et l’automobile. Pour maîtriser la complexité de tels systèmes évolutionnaires à logiciel prépondérant, il est fondamental de pouvoir concevoir leurs architectures logicielles afin de satisfaire leurs exigences fonctionnelles et non-fonctionnelles. En particulier, il est nécessaire de modéliser et exécuter des processus systématiques pour concevoir les architectures logicielles de SoS. Malgré ce besoin croissant, la plupart de leurs architectures logicielles sont encore développées de manière ad hoc. En général, il y a un manque de processus structurés pour concevoir les architectures des SoS. Cet état de l’art entrave leur développement, notamment pour les applications critiques. Cette thèse présente SOAR (General Process for Acknowledged SoS Software Architectures) qui rend possible la mise en place de processus de conception architecturale pour SoS reconnus. Ce framework de processus a été conçu pour fournir différents niveaux de support en fonction des différents contextes de développement de SoS. Il comprend un noyau de haut niveau qui décrit ce qu’il faut faire pour la conception des architectures de SoS et ainsi que trois pratiques avec des activités spécifiques et des produits de travail pour guider l’analyse, la synthèse et l’évaluation architecturale. SOAR a été implémenté à l’aide d’Essence (Kernel and Language for Software Engineering Methods), un Standard OMG/SEMAT. Afin de valider SOAR, trois enquêtes, une étude de viabilité et une expérimentation ont été menées. Les résultats obtenus dans ces trois études montrent que SOAR répond positivement au besoin exprimée. / System-of-Systems (SoS) refer to complex, large-scale, and often critical software-intensive systems whose importance has rapidly grown over this decade. This is the case, for instance, of SoS for energy grids, multimodal traffic control, and smart cities. We find SoS in different application areas as diverse as environment, transportation, energy, healthcare, aerospace, aeronautics, and automotive. For mastering the complexity of such evolutionary software-intensive systems, it is fundamental to be able to design their software architectures for satisfying both functional and non-functional requirements. In particular, there is the need to model and enact systematic processes to design SoS software architectures. Despite this increasing necessity, most of the SoS software architectures have been still developed in an ad hoc manner. In general, there is a lack of structured processes for architecting SoS. This state-of-art hinders SoS development, in particular for critical applications. This thesis presents SOAR (General Process for Acknowledged SoS Software Architectures) that supports the modeling and enactment of architectural design processes for acknowledged SoS. Conceived to provide different levels of support according to different SoS development contexts, it comprises a high-level kernel that describes what must be done when architecting SoS and also three practices with specific activities and work products to guide how to perform architectural analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. SOAR was implemented using Essence (Kernel and Language for Software Engineering Methods), an OMG/SEMAT Standard. To validate SOAR, three surveys, a viability study, and an experiment were conducted. Results achieved in these studies indicate that SOAR positively meets the expressed need.

In 2005 the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) published a White Paper in which it detailed its Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) (UK MoD, 2005). The strategy involved a rapid transformation of UK defence towards a product-service, business-like paradigm through the adoption of Through Life Capability Management (TLCM). TLCM has since been succeeded by other initiatives. However, for organisations involved in the management of capability through life, the associated principles of operation as well as the challenges remain, including that of the management of knowledge. The confederated capability enterprise is a distributed knowledge system. Knowledge of the systems, for which a particular organisation has through-life management responsibility, may be distributed throughout an enterprise that comprises several commercial organisations as well as the customer. The bringing together of different components of capability and perspectives makes managing knowledge difficult. This is complicated further by the observation that in a decade one can expect a significant proportion of the manpower involved in a capability will have changed. Success in this type of environment requires a clear understanding of the value of particular knowledge within the organisation as well as effective knowledge management in the wider enterprise. Dstl and EPSRC have jointly funded this research which addresses management of knowledge for through life capability through modelling of the capability enterprise, a workshop on TLCM benefits and behaviours, a comparative case study at a commercial service company and the UK MoD including Dstl, and knowledge mapping within a specific exemplar capability. The results of the modelling illustrated the Systems of Systems (SoS) nature of the enterprise and the need to align capability and management processes across the enterprise. How well this can be achieved depends on the extent to which both the UK MoD and industry are willing to share, access and process information and knowledge. This would require trust between the individuals and organisations involved. The need for trust was emphasised in an international workshop where the participants discussed the behaviours that were required for the perceived benefits of TLCM to be realised. The workshop members highlighted trust in long term planning as industry seeks to manage skills and knowledge over time. ServiceCo provides communication and media services to customers globally. It comprises four customer-facing divisions and two operational units. The case which was based on interviews in one customer-facing and one operational unit revealed the following: • Focus on corporate values supports knowledge management behaviours across the organisation. • Succession planning is needed for all skills and knowledge that are critical or essential to the business. • Once the continual renewal of knowledge slows down and/or stops in an organisation, the knowledge is lost. The second case of the study was the Royal Navy Command Head Quarters and Dstl. Dstl is a trading fund that provides UK MoD and the wider UK government specialist Science & Technology services and operates and manages the Chief Scientific Advisor's research programme. The case study revealed: • Security regulations and considerations impact significantly on effective management of knowledge. • Knowledge retrieval can be 'hit and miss' as complicated filing structures and indexing practices are applied inconsistently, leading to individuals adopting a number of strategies to share knowledge. • Succession planning for people with rare skills is an issue that impacts business continuation. Comparison between the two cases showed that the two organisations experienced different problems but that the knowledge behaviours adopted by the individuals involved were essentially the same. This pointed to the need to address the issues associated with the management of knowledge as cultural and organisational in nature. Personal strategies to manage and share knowledge included individuals retaining copies of files on desktop hard drives and keeping paper copies in drawers; documents were emailed to ensure the intended audience would get it or be able to access it; and asking a colleague for advice on where to find out things. An important difference between knowledge management between the two organisations was that the UK MoD relied on processes due to the rapid change of personnel whereas the service company relied on personal relationships as people remained in the roles for longer. The knowledge mapping of 'moving personnel and materiel using vehicles' revealed that each Line of Development (LoDs) has its own constituent (LoDs) indicating the requirement to manage organisational capability in order to deliver capability to customers. It also illustrated all the active knowledge that is required in order for the capability to be delivered. The research main contributions are: • Theoretical models for exploring the use of knowledge in acquisition projects over time • Comparing two organisations at separate ends of the organisational spectrum and identifying common organisational factors that influence the management of knowledge for through life capability • Recognising that the enterprise is a capability SoS. In order to successfully delivery capability, knowledge about and within the components needs to be managed. Other findings include: • Management of knowledge for TLCM puts the focus on managing knowledge for future capability requirements rather than on retention of knowledge products, bringing in aspects such as business continuation planning and consequently impacting on the organisation's future development. • There is a strong relationship between knowledge conservation, human resource management and company policies. • Managing changes in design and/or function requires a good understanding of the different processes used within the various disciplines involved across the capability components and how they contribute to the final product and to each other. • An organisation's goals and the manner in which it organises itself to achieve them with regard to the management of knowledge does not appear linked. Instead, focus falls on the organisational architecture and the human resource polices that it implies. • 'Knowing' is an individual capability and also a social one; communities of practice and networking are necessary components of an organisation's knowledge base. • Knowing whom to ask and where to look is in a knowledge retrieval perspective nearly as important as knowing what to look for. • 'Individuals know while documents, processes and tools support knowing'. This emphasises the need for a close connection between humans and IT-based knowledge repositories. • The role of IT in knowledge management can either be to correlate knowledge in people's heads to relevant projects or to correlate individuals and knowledge in relevant projects depending on the key questions asked in the management of knowledge within the organisation. • The role of IT in determining issues related to the relevance and location of documentation differs depending of the organisation's reliance on face to face interactions between employees as a means for communicating this information. • The capability end user is in some instances hard to define. How the end user is defined determines where the SoS boundaries are defined. It is probably better to define the boundary as a broad fuzzy border. The indeterminacy implied by this view becomes a complexity issue for management of knowledge. • The impetus to manage knowledge and how is influenced legal requirements and by the organisation's relationships with its stakeholders including the extent it is subject to external scrutiny. Based on the research, a number of recommendations are made.

No / Recent research in membrane computing examines and confirms the anticipated modelling potential of kernel P systems in several case studies. On the one hand, this computational model is destined to be an abstract archetype which advocates the unity and integrity of P systems onto a single formalism. On the other hand, this envisaged convergence is conceived at the expense of a vast set of primitives and intricate semantics, an exigent context when considering the development of simulation and verification methodologies and tools. Encouraged and guided by the success and steady progress of similar undertakings, in this paper we directly address the issue of formal verification of kernel P systems by means of model checking and unveil a software framework, kpWorkbench, which integrates a set of related tools in support of our approach. A case study that centres around the well known Subset Sum problem progressively demonstrates each stage of the proposed methodology: expressing a kP system model in recently introduced kP-Lingua; the automatic translation of this model into a Promela (Spin) specification; the assisted, interactive construction of a set of LTL properties based on natural language patterns; and finally, the formal verification of these properties against the converted model, using the Spin model checker.

Thesis (M.Sc.), Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2000. / Restricted until June 2001. Bibliography: leaves [93]-98.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2004. / A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Science) - Computing and Information Technology. Includes bibliography.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Dissertation (Ph.D.) - Simon Fraser University, 2005. / Dissertation (Dept. of Psychology) / Simon Fraser University. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-93).

Thesis (M.S. in Information Systems)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 1992. / Thesis Advisor: Nakagawa, Gordon. "March 1992." Description based on title screen as viewed on March 4, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 66).

In order to achieve binding Government targets towards the decarbonisation of the electricity network, the GB power system is undergoing an unprecedented amount of change. A series of new technologies designed to integrate massive volumes of renewable generation, predominantly in the form of offshore wind, asynchronously connecting to the periphery of the transmission system, are transforming the requirements of the network. This displacement of traditional thermal generation is leading to a significant reduction in system inertia, thus making the task of system operation more challenging. It is therefore deemed necessary to develop tools and technologies that provide far greater insight into the state of the power system in real-time and give rise to methods for improving offline modelling practices through an enhanced understanding of the systems performance. To that extent PMUs are seen as one of the key enablers of the Smart Grid, providing accurate time-synchronised measurements on the state of the power system, allowing the true dynamics of the power system to be captured and analysed. This thesis provides an analysis of the existing PMU deployment on the GB transmission system with a view to the future system monitoring requirements. A critical evaluation and comparison is also provided on the suitability of a University based Low Voltage PMU network to further enhance the visibility of the GB system. In addition a novel event detection algorithm based on Detrended Fluctuation Analysis is developed and demonstrated, designed to determine the exact start time of a transmission event, as well as the suitability of such an event for additional transmission system analysis, namely inertia estimation. Finally, a reliable method for the estimation of total system inertia is proposed that includes an estimate of the contribution from residual sources, of which there is currently no visibility. The proposed method identifies the importance of regional inertia and its impact to the operation of the GB transmission system.

Two Poisson brackets are called compatible if any linear combination of these brackets is a Poisson bracket again. The set of non-zero linear combinations of two compatible Poisson brackets is called a Poisson pencil. A system is called bihamiltonian (with respect to a given pencil) if it is hamiltonian with respect to any bracket of the pencil. The property of being bihamiltonian is closely related to integrability. On the one hand, many integrable systems known from physics and geometry possess a bihamiltonian structure. On the other hand, if we have a bihamiltonian system, then the Casimir functions of the brackets of the pencil are commuting integrals of the system. We consider the situation when these integrals are enough for complete integrability. As it was shown by Bolsinov and Oshemkov, many properties of the system in this case can be deduced from the properties of the Poisson pencil itself, without explicit analysis of the integrals. Developing these ideas, we introduce a notion of linearization of a Poisson pencil. In terms of linearization, we give a criterion for non-degeneracy of a singular point and describe its type. These results are applied to solve the stability problem for a free multidimensional rigid body.