Ontology-based requirement verification for complex systems

Verification is a necessary part of Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) which is becoming a mainstream methodology for the design of complex systems. Verification in the early design stage has aroused widespread attention for its efficiency and cost-saving. Although there are numbers of researches on verification, some deficiencies still exist, such as the integration of design and verification needs to improve, the design problems are hard to trace and the behavior verification in the early design stage is often omitted. In this study, a novel ontology-based requirement verification method for complex systems is proposed to solve the above-mentioned problems. First, a requirement formalization method is proposed to avoid the ambiguousness of natural language, to make requirements easier to verify, and to make design problems easier to trace. Second, some transformation rules are defined to realize the automatic design ontology and rule generation. Based on these two steps, automated verification can be done through reasoning with ontology models and rules. This verification method is fully integrated with design tools and no additional expertise is needed for designers. To validate its feasibility and advantages, an example of a smart traffic light system is provided.