Developing Systems Engineering Ontologies

Systems engineering ontologies are required to assist interested parties in understanding the systems engineering discipline's broad and multi-faceted nature. This paper discusses the need for and general benefits of an ontology. The authors discuss the use of the domain knowledge acquisition process ontology modeling technique and its application to capture a systems engineering functional domain ontology. A preliminary systems engineering functional domain ontology generated using the ontology development methodology is presented. This systems engineering ontology will continue to be refined over time. This paper discusses plans to develop a system of systems engineering ontology using the developed systems engineering ontology.