The concept of a mission is important to system design and development, especially in system of systems (SoS) engineering. However, the diverse usage of the term ’mission’ across disciplines often results in ambiguity regarding its role in practical applications in mission-centric engineering tasks. Clearly defined and precisely represented missions improve communication among stakeholders and help bridge interdisciplinary gaps. This study aims to investigate and analyze the state of the art for mission conceptualizations and representations and proposes a unified mission ontology (UMO) that improves semantic interoperability across various domains. To achieve this goal, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to examine how missions are conceptualized and represented, analyzed the findings to obtain insight about cross-domain concepts related to missions, and developed a UMO that can be adapted to domain specific applications. The UMO facilitates semantic interoperability across domains through a high-level abstraction of shared concepts. To validate the comprehensiveness and adaptability of the UMO, we conducted coverage analysis using semantic similarity estimates to assess the equivalence of ontological concepts. This evaluation quantified the extent to which concepts from various domain-specific ontologies, including the mission engineering guideline, align with those in the UMO.

The concept of a mission is fundamental to system design and development, especially in system of systems (SoS) engineering. However, the diverse usage of the term 'mission' across disciplines, coupled with the absence of universally accepted definitions, often results in ambiguity regarding its core meaning and practical application in mission-centric engineering tasks. Clearly defined and precisely represented missions are essential for improving communication among stakeholders and bridging interdisciplinary gaps. This study aims to develop a unified mission ontology that promotes clarity and improves interoperability across various domains. To achieve this goal, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to examine how missions are conceptualized and represented, followed by a thorough analysis of the findings. Based on the analysis results, we propose a unified mission ontology that can be tailored for domain-specific applications, promoting interoperability across domains through a high-level abstraction of shared concepts. To validate the comprehensiveness and adaptability of the proposed unified mission ontology, we conducted a coverage analysis using semantic similarity estimates to assess the equivalence of ontological concepts. This evaluation quantified the extent to which concepts from various domain-specific ontologies, including the mission engineering guideline, align with those in the proposed unified mission ontology.