Determination of stakeholders' consensus over values of system of systems

This paper focuses on one of the earliest steps in System of Systems (SoS) design aiming to meaningfully determine stakeholders' values or preferences. It recommends the plural problem definition and dynamic construction of stakeholder's values in the front end of design process. It suggests a method based on the probability theory to embed flexibility and tolerance, and construct a basic framework for collecting, processing and combining uncertain information. This study uses a graphical tool to facilitate communication and probabilistically utilize the stakeholders' values. It introduces the “degree of consensus” as a metric to rank the identified values. This metric represents the consent of stakeholders on SoS values used for example in its architecture, design decisions, or alternative evaluation. The paper explains the mathematical formulation and presents an application example for design of a mobile meteorological station as a part of a world program for dealing with the global warming.