Risk Management for System of Systems: A Systematic Mapping Study

Context: System of Systems (SoS) is a set of independent systems that cooperate to achieve an emergent behavior. SoSs have been used in different domains such as defense, transportation, energy, and health care, which directly impact on the society. The critical nature of SoS, in which a failure in one of its Constituent Systems (CSs) may lead to catastrophic damages to the property, environment, injuries or loss of human's life, demands risk management activities. Existing risk management practices applied to SoS are extensions of risk management techniques at the CS level. Objective: in this paper, we present an overview of risk management approaches and tools for SoS. Method: we performed a Systematic Mapping (SM) study by searching into five databases to identify primary studies. We identified 22 primary studies related to risk management practices for SoS. Results: from the analysis of these primary studies, we identified a set of risks and risk management practices for SoS and their differences to risk management techniques at the CS level. Conclusion: the identified approaches and support tools for risk management in the SoS level are not well established yet.