Ontology-driven requirements engineering with reference to the aerospace industry

7.4.3 Ontology‐driven Requirements Engineering —A case study of OntoREM in the aerospace context

“…In most cases, some new, additional parts of the solution space (red) will have to be developed in order for the overall solution to satisfy the problem at hand. The outcome in the solution space is the requirements specification for a new aircraft system, which is likely to embody both existing and newly identified requirements [4]. In order to elicit the missing parts of the problem space and develop the missing parts of the solution space, the OntoREM process consists of a number of workflows and associated activities that are potentially iterative and concurrent, and conducted with all relevant domains, re-using where possible existing domain ontologies or knowledge bases, or building new domain ontologies where needed (with the help of relevant stakeholders and domain experts).…”

“…In order to elicit the missing parts of the problem space and develop the missing parts of the solution space, the OntoREM process consists of a number of workflows and associated activities that are potentially iterative and concurrent, and conducted with all relevant domains, re-using where possible existing domain ontologies or knowledge bases, or building new domain ontologies where needed (with the help of relevant stakeholders and domain experts). The OntoREM process, the concepts and relationships needed to apply it, roles, tools, as well as goal and requirement templates are specified in the OntoREM Metamodel (as an ontology model) [4].…”

“…First, non-functional requirements have been identified as being very challenging to develop [1,10] and AO requirements consist, to a large extent, of non-functional requirements, some of which are specific to the wing domain, while others are of relevance across a number of aircraft domains such as the fuselage, landing gear or fuel system domains. Second, the time and budget restrictions imposed on the OntoREM project required a focused approach, limiting investigation to a smaller area of particularly interesting and challenging requirements to be developed using OntoREM [4]. The case study took place from June to September 2009.…”

“…It consists of a number of quality, time and cost criteria that were observed during the application of OntoREM, and measured (regarding quality) and estimated (regarding process times and costs) following the application of the traditional requirements process. The OntoRAT tool (Ontology-driven Requirements Analysis Tool) was developed during the OntoREM project and deployed to both enhance the development of requirements as integral part of OntoREM, and assess the quality of those requirements [4,10]. The interested reader is invited to look at reference [4] for a description of the OntoREM Metamodel that specifies (in the form of ontology) the OntoREM relationships that are used by the OntoRAT tool; and reference [10] for a more detailed view on the OntoRAT tool itself.…”

“…Some work has been done to explore knowledge-driven RE as opposed to merely process-driven RE in the context of the OntoREM research project -a joint project between the University of the West of England and Airbus. Within this project, an Ontology-driven Requirements Engineering Methodology has been developed in order to explore the potential benefits of such an approach over traditional RE approaches by means of a case study in the aerospace industry [4]. The present paper will give a brief overview of the OntoREM methodology and how it was applied to a case study within the aerospace context in order to evaluate the potential of such an ontology-driven approach, before discussing both the selected evaluation framework and the findings of the case study.…”