Extending argumentation to goal-oriented requirements engineering

Abstract. A key goal in safety-critical system development is to provide assurance that the critical requirements are sufficiently addressed. This goal is typically refined into three sub-goals, namely that the safety requirements are validated, satisfied and traceable. The achievement of these sub-goals is typically communicated by means of a safety argument supported by items of evidence (e.g. testing, review or analysis). In this paper, we explore the relationships between goals, requirements, and arguments. We discuss how argumentation is used to assure the decomposition and traceability of requirements in safety-critical applications. Particularly, we focus on the achievement of goals related to both the requirements artefacts and the underlying requirements process

Arguing security: validating security requirements using structured argumentation

This paper proposes using both formal and structured informal arguments to show that an eventual realized system can satisfy its security requirements. These arguments, called 'satisfaction arguments', consist of two parts: a formal argument based upon claims about domain properties, and a set of informal arguments that justify the claims. Building on our earlier work on trust assumptions and security requirements, we show how using satisfaction arguments assists in clarifying how a system satisfies its security requirements, in the process identifying those properties of domains that are critical to the requirements

Arguing satisfaction of security requirements

This chapter presents a process for security requirements elicitation and analysis, based around the construction of a satisfaction argument for the security of a system. The process starts with the enumeration of security goals based on assets in the system, then uses these goals to derive security requirements in the form of constraints. Next, a satisfaction argument for the system is constructed, using a problem-centered representation, a formal proof to analyze properties that can be demonstrated, and structured informal argumentation of the assumptions exposed during construction of the argument. Constructing the satisfaction argument can expose missing and inconsistent assumptions about system context and behavior that effect security, and a completed argument provides assurances that a system can respect its security requirements

Challenges in Bridging Social Semantics and Formal Semantics on the Web

This paper describes several results of Wimmics, a research lab which names stands for: web-instrumented man-machine interactions, communities, and semantics. The approaches introduced here rely on graph-oriented knowledge representation, reasoning and operationalization to model and support actors, actions and interactions in web-based epistemic communities. The re-search results are applied to support and foster interactions in online communities and manage their resources

Collaborative design : managing task interdependencies and multiple perspectives

This paper focuses on two characteristics of collaborative design with respect to cooperative work: the importance of work interdependencies linked to the nature of design problems; and the fundamental function of design cooperative work arrangement which is the confrontation and combination of perspectives. These two intrinsic characteristics of the design work stress specific cooperative processes: coordination processes in order to manage task interdependencies, establishment of common ground and negotiation mechanisms in order to manage the integration of multiple perspectives in design

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N

KEMNAD: A Knowledge Engineering Methodology for Negotiating Agent Development

Automated negotiation is widely applied in various domains. However, the development of such systems is a complex knowledge and software engineering task. So, a methodology there will be helpful. Unfortunately, none of existing methodologies can offer sufficient, detailed support for such system development. To remove this limitation, this paper develops a new methodology made up of: (1) a generic framework (architectural pattern) for the main task, and (2) a library of modular and reusable design pattern (templates) of subtasks. Thus, it is much easier to build a negotiating agent by assembling these standardised components rather than reinventing the wheel each time. Moreover, since these patterns are identified from a wide variety of existing negotiating agents(especially high impact ones), they can also improve the quality of the final systems developed. In addition, our methodology reveals what types of domain knowledge need to be input into the negotiating agents. This in turn provides a basis for developing techniques to acquire the domain knowledge from human users. This is important because negotiation agents act faithfully on the behalf of their human users and thus the relevant domain knowledge must be acquired from the human users. Finally, our methodology is validated with one high impact system

A framework for security requirements engineering

This paper presents a framework for security requirements elicitation and analysis, based upon the construction of a context for the system and satisfaction arguments for the security of the system. One starts with enumeration of security goals based on assets in the system. These goals are used to derive security requirements in the form of constraints. The system context is described using a problem-centered notation, then this context is validated against the security requirements through construction of a satisfaction argument. The satisfaction argument is in two parts: a formal argument that the system can meet its security requirements, and a structured informal argument supporting the assumptions expressed in the formal argument. The construction of the satisfaction argument may fail, revealing either that the security requirement cannot be satisfied in the context, or that the context does not contain sufficient information to develop the argument. In this case, designers and architects are asked to provide additional design information to resolve the problems

Engineering simulations for cancer systems biology

Computer simulation can be used to inform in vivo and in vitro experimentation, enabling rapid, low-cost hypothesis generation and directing experimental design in order to test those hypotheses. In this way, in silico models become a scientific instrument for investigation, and so should be developed to high standards, be carefully calibrated and their findings presented in such that they may be reproduced. Here, we outline a framework that supports developing simulations as scientific instruments, and we select cancer systems biology as an exemplar domain, with a particular focus on cellular signalling models. We consider the challenges of lack of data, incomplete knowledge and modelling in the context of a rapidly changing knowledge base. Our framework comprises a process to clearly separate scientific and engineering concerns in model and simulation development, and an argumentation approach to documenting models for rigorous way of recording assumptions and knowledge gaps. We propose interactive, dynamic visualisation tools to enable the biological community to interact with cellular signalling models directly for experimental design. There is a mismatch in scale between these cellular models and tissue structures that are affected by tumours, and bridging this gap requires substantial computational resource. We present concurrent programming as a technology to link scales without losing important details through model simplification. We discuss the value of combining this technology, interactive visualisation, argumentation and model separation to support development of multi-scale models that represent biologically plausible cells arranged in biologically plausible structures that model cell behaviour, interactions and response to therapeutic interventions