A Formal Foundation of Systems Engineering

In this paper we discuss a formal foundation of systems engineering based on category theory. The main difference with other categorical approaches is the choice of the structure of the base category (symmetric monoidal or compact closed) which is, on the one hand, much better adapted to current modeling tools and languages (e.g. SysML), and on the other hand is canonically associated to a logic (linear logic or fragments thereof) that fits better with systems engineering. Since that logic has also a rich proof theory, this allows us to propose a global formal framework that encompasses: system modeling, system specification, and property verification.