An Investigation Into Environmental Impact of System of Systems

Traditionally, environmental impact of products is considered as a function of the product itself. However, products can only function not only within their own system, but by dynamically interacting with other systems, hence all together they form a network of System of Systems (SoSs). In this context, not only the individual product system itself but also the dynamic interactions between the systems might have an impact on the environment which could also be described as rebound effect of the SoS emerging behavior. Therefore, it is crucial to study these systems within their SoSs in order to understand their environmental impacts more accurately. This paper first provides a perspective about these systems from the general system theory perspective to understand their characteristics and then introduces a conceptual framework to study their environmental impact. The framework is tested by using fore- and background transportation systems to demonstrate the applicability of the framework.