3.3.2 Bridging the Gap Between Human Thinking and Machine Processing in Developing and Maintaining Domain Knowledge

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the gap between human and machine thinking in the area of the development and maintenance of domain knowledge; and how the differences in the way humans and machines think or process information can be exploited for the benefit of the domains in question.Looking in turn at mind mapping as an effective human thinking technique and ontology as a machine readable standard, the paper will discuss the role of mind mapping in the Requirements Engineering (RE) process in general; and provide some insight into the development of the OntoREM-MindMapper (OMM) tool that will serve to support the Ontology-driven Requirements Engineering Methodology (OntoREM) by enabling controlled transfers of domain knowledge between mind maps and ontologies.

Applying OntoREM to a Space Mission: Developing Requirements for the MASCOT Lander

“…OntoREM workflows and activities are iterative and can be conducted concurrently, which allows managing any changes or refinements in the domain knowledge/ontologies under development. The main advantages of using domain ontologies in the context of OntoREM are that the analysis and re-usability of the specified domain knowledge including requirements is greatly enhanced which, in turn, allows for significant process time savings and increased quality of the data contained in the domain ontology in terms of correctness, completeness and consistency [3]. The main advantages of using domain ontologies in the context of OntoREM are that the analysis and re-usability of the specified domain knowledge including requirements is greatly enhanced which, in turn, allows for significant process time savings and increased quality of the data contained in the domain ontology in terms of correctness, completeness and consistency [3].…”

“…These are then used during the OntoREM lifecycle as the underlying knowledge basis, from which domain needs, goals, and requirements are derived, modelled, analysed and specified [3]. with domain experts and relevant stakeholders in order to generate comprehensive, sharable, and validated domain ontologies that are of relevance for the domain in question.…”

“…Additional project and system requirements were formulated where needed so that the requirements behind each root goal were considered sufficient in their entirety to satisfy the root goal in question. Figure 8 shows a traceability mind map that was automatically created from the MASCOT domain ontology in OWL DL by means of the OntoREM Mind-Mapper tool, which was developed as part of the OntoREM Methodology [3]. Subsequently, the derived goal hierarchies were similarly imported into the domain ontology and linked appropriately.…”

Enhancing the Academic Portfolio – Systems Engineering Research & Teaching for Universities

“…In addition to several screenshots from the Protégé ontology editor, looking at different aspects of the SE domain ontology in OWL notation, the paper also shows a couple of visualizations of ontology content in mind map format. The use of mind maps to visualize and communicate ontology content has been demonstrated as a more human-friendly way (Zayed, Kossmann & Odeh, 2013).…”

“…The utilized object properties are displayed as pale yellow, elliptical shapes with the instances of the linked classes as sub-branches. Such visualizations in mind map formats have been found to be more user-friendly to communicate aspects of the domain ontology to other people, who are not familiar with the concept of ontologies or the notation of OWL (Zayed, Kossmann & Odeh, 2013). Figure 6: A mind map view of the need to ensure 'employability' of SE students Figure 7 offers a view on one of the instances of the class 'Actor' in the problem space, i.e.…”