A Breakdown of System of Systems Needs Using Architecture Frameworks, Ontologies and Description Logic Reasoning

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper “A Breakdown of System of Systems Needs Using Architecture Frameworks, Ontologies and Description Logic Reasoning” is devoted to the development of a methodology for breaking down of System of System requirements into capabilities and functions. The paper will be interesting for specialists in aerospace System Engineering. The text is well written, the presented approach for the breakdown of SoS using framework and ontology is clearly described, and its application for SAR system is presented. The paper can be accepted for publication in Aerospace journal.

Author Response

Dear reviewer 1, thank you for reviewing our article and giving us the positive feedback.

Reviewer 2 Report

- In general, I think the technical merit and discussion about SoS is sufficient for publication. However, as written, this manuscript is not suitable for the audience of the Aerospace journal. Rather, this manuscript reads like it was targeted for a SoS or systems engineering audience. For publication in the Aerospace journal, more discussion and context on the topics associated with the journal are required. I'm recommending a major revision, instead of rejection, because I think the SoS concept has merit. My remaining comments elaborate more on this feedback, rather than focus on specific technical or grammatical instances.

- For a submission to Aerospace, I'm concerned the manuscript will not be of interest to readers. Up to lines 357 and the start of Section 4, the manuscript discusses in detail systems-of-systems and capability engineering, but the discussion lacks aviation or aerospace context. The manuscript does a good job explaining the technical merit of SoS and as a member of the aviation community, I think SoS and ontology research are underrepresented in the community. The manuscript can be significantly improved by providing aerospace context throughout, rather than limited to the introduction of Section 4 and the entirety of Section 4.1

- The manuscript can benefit from more discussions similar to lines 427-436. This paragraph discusses how aviation-specific challenges, such as weather or no-fly zones, can be considered as part of a SoS analysis by introducing the Parameters Environment (Pm-En) view.

- While Sections 4.2 and 4.3 do a good job of explaining of the SoS and ontology structure, additional context for the readers of the journal are required. For example lines 520-529 discusses Query classes and provide a quick example of Query2 fulfilled by "helicopter." There are no technical issues with the paragraph but the paragraph should be reworked to better align with the aerospace journal. I recommend the paragraph to focus more on the helicopter and SAR use case and then describe how to implement this concept using SoS. 

- Section 5 also reads more like a generic SoS paper rather than an aviation-specific paper for the Aerospace journal. For example, lines 633-636 states "However, no top-level ontology was included in the case study, as mentioned previously. It is possible that a meta-ontology structure could be utilized to dynamically activate relevant domain ontologies and thereby parts of the design space. A specific ontology for airborne vehicles could be included if the reasoner infers that it is suitable to fulfil a specific query." The first two sentences are generic and can fit into any discussion about SoS and provide no aviation / aerospace context. The last sentence about a ontology for airborne vehicles is extremely relevant to the Aerospace journal but this ontology is provided as future work, with the manuscript positioned as a starting point for this ontology. For the aerospace journal, I would like to see more emphasis on the airborne vehicle ontology rather than the theory behind ontologies.

- I strongly support and appreciate that the ontology representation and diagrams are easily accessible. However the gitlab.liu.se repository did not include a license which specifies terms of use. As a researcher, I would be extremely hesitant to use any publicly accessible software or data that lacks a license.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2, thank you for reviewing our manuscript and giving us the opportunity to improve it. The aerospace context has been improved throughout the manuscript, and with more discussions in sections 4 and 5. Also, thank you for pointing out the lack of licensing information on the data repositories. A CC BY-SA 4.0 license has been added to both accordingly.

For a detailed description of the made changes and adjustments to the manuscript, see the attached Response to Reviewer 2 Comments.pdf.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,
I really appreciate your efforts involved in this scientific research work, that is of real interest and has a great attractivity for a large community of readers and specialists working in the field. I really like this approach of the proposed  method with an architecture framework and ontology which can be used to help breakdown SoS needs into required capabilities and functions. An ontology representation of the information captured in the architecture framework has several advantages well described in the presentation. The proposed  approach is illustrated and tested on an interesting case study. Its efficiency is proved by the  obtained results. 

Thanks, 

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer 3, we are glad that you found our approach and work interesting. Thank you for reviewing our article and giving us the positive feedback.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors have fully addressed my comments from the first review. I recommend accepting the manuscript.