Requirement Engineering Technique for Smart Spaces

Abstract

A smart space is an increasingly important application of Internet of Things (IoT), which is being developed throughout the world for different purposes ranging from home automation to smart grids. However, a common approach for requirement capture and specification at an abstract level is needed in smart space development that is independent of the continuously changing technology. To provide a systematic process, the standard software engineering practices can be used in the smart space development, and hence take advantages of. In this context, this paper contributes in the field of requirement engineering for smart spaces by introducing the requirement specification technique based on software engineering Use Case concept. The conventional Use Case structure and the way it is described are modified to suit the requirements of smart spaces. The case of a hypothetical smart space development is considered, where the proposed requirement specification technique is applied and a Use Case repository is developed that can be used as a canonical resource for other researchers to draw upon. The implementation provides profound descriptions on how to use the proposed requirement specification technique during the development of smart spaces and in other application areas of IoT. This work can be used as a first step towards defining the smart space development framework, of which the proposed technique would be a key element.

Formal Specification Approach for Smart Space Development

“…In this way, the PSS is supposed to provide a crowd control and management strategy that can inform, restrict, and route the pilgrims to less crowded areas. In our previous work [8], the smart space models, application scenarios, and descriptions are developed for Masjid Al-Haram. The identified actors, use cases, and their interaction are illustrated through UML Use Case models (an example is shown in Figure 1).…”

“…To elicit and capture the requirements of developing a smart space, this work utilizes the requirement engineering technique for smart spaces [8]. The presented technique [7] allows the requirement gathering during smart space development in a systematic way.…”

“…The presented technique [7] allows the requirement gathering during smart space development in a systematic way. First, the possible actions occurring in the smart space are identified, where each action is represented by a use case.Then, the related actions are grouped into different application scenarios based on common functionality.Finally, the elicited requirements are specified using the modified Use Case models [8]. The approach presented in this paper adopts these developed use case models and considers each action group as one component.…”

“…The proposed approach first identifies the key components of a smart space and then elaborate their detailed formal specifications in terms of state and operational schemas. This research work proposes the development of a smart space in Masjid Al-Haram, the sacred mosque in Makkah [8]. The details of the Proposed Smart Space (PSS) are provided in Section 2.…”

“…The proposed approach and its steps are presented in Section 3. To validate the applicability of the proposed approach, five different key components of the PSS are identified using the UML Use Case models, which are developed in our previous paper [8]. Then, formal specification of these components is provided by identifying their states and events causing state transitions, in Section 4.…”