Missions represent a key concern in the development of systems-of-systems (SoS) since
they can be related to both capabilities of constituent systems and interactions among
these systems that contribute to the accomplishment of global goals of the SoS. For this
reason, mission models are promising starting points to the SoS development process
and they can be used as a basis for the specification and validation of SoS architectural
models. Specifying and validating architectural models for SoS are difficult tasks compared
to usual systems, the inner complexity of this kind of systems relies specially on the
emergent behaviors, i.e. features that emerge from the cooperation between the constituent
parts of the SoS that often cannot be accurately predicted. This work is concerned with
such a synergetic relationship between mission and architectural models, giving a special
attention to the emergent behavior that arise for a given configuration of the SoS. We
propose a development approach for architectural modeling of SoS, centered in the so-
called mission models. In this proposal, the mission model is used to both derive and
validate architectures of SoS. In a first moment we generate the structural definition for
the architecture using model transformation. Later, as the architect specify the behavioral
aspects of the system, it will be validated using a composite approach that includes
both properties verification and manual validation through simulation. The validation
is aimed to emergent behaviors, but can be extended to any aspect of the architecture.
Validating the mission model through simulation also enables the architect to identify
unpredicted, undesirable behaviors. Furthermore, the simulation can be used to improve
the mission model, guide evolution, identify new requirements and/or missions, etc. A
tool that implements the whole approach is also proposed, integrating existing tools for
the involved mechanisms.