Traceability in the Model-based Design of Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract

Design, development, and analysis of complex Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs) using models involves a collaboration of expertise from different engineering domains. Heterogeneous artefacts are generated, often using different lifecycle modeling languages and simulation tools. Capturing the traceability information among these artefacts can be used to support several activities such as requirements tracing, impact analysis of change requests, verification, validation, and documentation. However, creating trace links among these heterogeneous artefacts is challenging as different tools in the development lifecycle are usually disparate and there is no precise semantic in the terminology used between requirement engineers, verification engineers, and system modelers. In this paper, we present a linked data-based approach to capture traceability information and create trace links that relate heterogeneous artefacts in the model-based design process of CPSs through a standardized interface and format using OSLC. This enables artefacts from different tools to be connected and queried through a standardized interface and format. A practical prototype system for supporting traceability is designed through integration with the INTO-CPS toolchain of CPS design. The traceability data is stored in Neo4j graph database which can be queried for generating various reports such as impact analysis, variant handling, etc.

Consent through the lens of semantics: State of the art survey and best practices

“…Peer-reviewed publications were the primary source of knowledge regarding approaches, and were identified using the scholarly indexing services: Google Scholar 8 , IEEE Xplore 9 , ACM Digital Library 10 , Scopus 11 , and DBLP 12 . In addition to these, information was gathered through dissemination networks such as Twitter 13 and public mailing lists, standardisation-related websites, and information portals of the research funding agencies.…”

“…GDPR defines consent as "any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject's wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her" (Art. 4 (11)) and has introduced additional requirements for how consent should be collected. To be specific, consent must be:…”

“…Semantic technologies, namely ontologies, have been gaining popularity in recent years due to their ability to specify and utilise relationships between entities and across domains and at large scales. On-tologies allow a better knowledge discovery, interpretability, transparency and traceability of data [7][8][9][10][11][12]. Moreover, semantic web technologies are based on open and interoperable standards such as RDF (Resource Description Framework) 5 for information representation, OWL (Web Ontology Language) 6 for representation of ontological modeling and SPARQL 7 for querying, and are extendable by design -making them suitable for application across use cases.…”

An Integrated Framework for Traceability and Impact Analysis in Requirements Verification of Cyber–Physical Systems

“…From the studies, one of the solutions for this challenge is tool integration where all existing tools are connected so that it becomes possible to exchange information about the heterogeneous artifacts and create traceability links between them. This was achieved for CPS development in our previous work [16], in which some of the components of the traceability framework were developed. What is currently missing is an integrated tool platform to establish, maintain, and use the traceability links of heterogeneous artifacts and activities (e.g., requirements, design models, scenario models, simulation results, validation, and verification) in the development life cycle.…”

“…The previous research work in the INTO-CPS project [16] supports traceability in the model-based design of CPSs between heterogeneous artifacts from different life cycle modeling languages and simulation tools through tool integration. The integration is based a standardized interface and format using OSLC, which allows artifacts from different tools to be connected to the workflow.…”