has continuant part at all times has proper continuant part at all times participates in at all times has history occupies spatial region at all times spatially disjoint from material entity system May be replaced by a BFO class, as discussed in http://www.jbiomedsem.com/content/4/1/43 http://www.jbiomedsem.com/content/4/1/43 A material entity consisting of multiple components that are causally integrated. SCO creator cited reference: Landgrebe, Jobst, and Barry Smith. 2022. Why Machines Will Never Rule the World: Artificial Intelligence without Fear. Taylor & Francis. 10.4324/9781003310105 SCO cretor comment: RO defines the class “system” as a subclass of the “material entity” class. Nevertheless, a system is a fiat object, e.g. an object that is “delimited” according to the perspective of the stakeholder (Landgrebe and Smith 2022, p. 117,118). System delimitation determines the boundaries of the systems, but the stakeholder, however, does not create the system through this delimitation process (Landgrebe and Smith 2022, p. 117,118). As this class is extensively reused among ontologies within the OBO-Foundry context, we maintain its current hierarchical position. However, we recommend a revision of this class. There are two possible strategies to consider: 1) to reclassify this class as a subclass of “fiat object part” one or 2) to create a dedicated “fiat object” class that will be a subclass of “material entity” and the superclass for the “system” one (and related subclasses). We leave the discussion open with the intention of engaging with subject matter experts, planning that these modifications may be included in the next release of this resource. As the environment of a system corresponds to what has not been delimited as part of such a system, these considerations correspondingly also apply to the class “system environment” (at least regarding the system-system environment boundaries). SCO developer comment: Despite minor differences, SCO representation of systems and related architecture and composition is compatible with that of the System Core Ontology (Calhau et al., 2024). The system Core Ontology centers on socio-techno systems, primarily pointing to an intention/goal-directed representation of these systems. SCO representation, instead, adopts a more neutral modeling approach for complex systems, seeking to account for a wider range of systems. SCO is also more compact than the system Core Ontology. This is, however, adequate for the current purposes of SCO. We envision employing the system Core Ontology as a starting point to extend SCO representation of system architecture, situations, properties, and functions. We also envision possible alignments and reciprocal implementations between these two ontologies. Calhau, R. F., Prince Sales, T., Oliveira, Í., Kokkula, S., Ferreira Pires, L., Cameron, D., Guizzardi, G., & Almeida, J. P. A. (2024). A System Core Ontology for Capability Emergence Modeling. In H. A. Proper, L. Pufahl, D. Karastoyanova, M. Van Sinderen, & J. Moreira (A c. Di), Enterprise Design, Operations, and Computing (Vol. 14367, pp. 3–20). Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46587-1_1 Ubbiali, G. A., Borghini, A., & Lange, M. C. (2024). Ontologies for Sustainability: Theoretical Challenges. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/z8uqr SCO developer comment: We envision discussions with subject matter experts regarding whether the current SCO representation of system-system component (and related environment) parthood is suitable or whether a proper parthood-based representation is more adequate. Insights for discussion may be found in Calhau et al. (2024) and Ubbiali et al. (2024). Calhau, R. F., Prince Sales, T., Oliveira, Í., Kokkula, S., Ferreira Pires, L., Cameron, D., Guizzardi, G., & Almeida, J. P. A. (2024). A System Core Ontology for Capability Emergence Modeling. In H. A. Proper, L. Pufahl, D. Karastoyanova, M. Van Sinderen, & J. Moreira (A c. Di), Enterprise Design, Operations, and Computing (Vol. 14367, pp. 3–20). Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46587-1_1 Ubbiali, G. A., Borghini, A., & Lange, M. C. (2024). Ontologies for Sustainability: Theoretical Challenges. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/z8uqr system development développement de système sviluppo del sistema system environment environnement de système ambiente del sistema system history historie de système storia del sistema system component composante de système componente del sistema system boundary frontière de système confine del sistema system spatial region région d’espace de système regione spaziale del sistema