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Formal modelling of OWL ontologies-based requirements for the development of safe and secure smart city systems

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Abstract

Formal methods are mathematical techniques used for developing reliable and verified systems. Event-B formal method is proved to be very useful to construct models of systems that are corrected by construction. Developing safe, secure, and reliable smart systems is essential for effective smart city solutions. The integration of safety and security mechanisms is an important aspect to achieve trust in smart cities’ services and applications. In this paper, we present prototype for the development of smart systems using OWL ontologies and Event-B formal models. We focus on the proposed approach that uses OWL ontologies to generate Event-B formal models for secure and safe development of systems. In recent years, ontologies-driven approaches have been applied during different phases to requirements engineering (RE), such as elicitation, analysis, specification, and validation. Many empirical studies have demonstrated benefits of the application of ontologies to handle ambiguity, inconsistency and incompleteness of requirements. We derive benefit from OWL ontologies to produce textual requirements that are consistent, complete, and unambiguous for formal modelling and to manage traceability between requirements and models. The approach uses Protégé-OWL editor, OWL verbaliser, Rodin platform, and OntoGraf tool. Protégé-OWL editor enables to build and view ontologies in Web Ontology Language (OWL). OWL verbaliser is used to generate controlled English requirements called Attempto Controlled English (ACE) from OWL ontologies. ACE representation is used as input requirements and transformed into Event-B formal models. Rodin platform is used for specification, refinement and proof. OntoGraf is a tool in Protégé that is used to visualise ontologies, and we make use of OntoGraf in this paper to assist in deciding refinement strategy and managing traceability between requirements and models.

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  1. Taif University, Taif, Saudi Arabia

    Eman Alkhammash

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  1. Eman Alkhammash
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Correspondence to Eman Alkhammash.

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Communicated by Miltiadis D. Lytras.

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Alkhammash, E. Formal modelling of OWL ontologies-based requirements for the development of safe and secure smart city systems. Soft Comput 24, 11095–11108 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-020-04688-z

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