Improving Collaboration in Search and Rescue System of Systems

Lack of collaboration between individual systems and System of Systems (SoS) program management is identified as one of the leading problems in SoS engineering. In SoS where individual systems have their own interests, it is necessary to incorporate mechanisms to persuade individual systems to participate in the SoS development. In this paper an incentive based negotiation model is outlined as a mechanism to increase participation of individual systems into the Search and Rescue SoS development. The model takes into account variations in outcomes due to uncertainty in the acquisition environment as well as contribution of each system to overall SoS mission. Different levels of individual system effort and different levels of SoS outcome are identified to determine appropriate levels of incentives for individual systems. Study of this application domain provides insights into how incentives can be used by decision makers to increase participation in SoS engineering and development.