Validating controlled English statements of requirements using functional models

Published

September 11, 2016

Author(s)

Peter O. Denno, Chang Christopher

Abstract

Organizing and validating system requirements are essential tasks in systems engineering. These tasks are not easily automated. We describe a method of tracing controlled English language requirements statements to functional models and checking the congruity of the requirements to the model. Functional system models express action-oriented conceptual solutions. Correspondingly, requirements statements are oftentimes action-oriented and quantitative with respect to performance. Our method recognizes the function type being expressed in controlled English statements of requirements and matches this with the corresponding function instance in a functional model of the system. Knowledge of these relationships can provide information suggesting whether or not the requirement is stated properly and can also provide a trace useful to downstream systems engineering.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research

Conference Dates

March 22-24, 2016

Conference Location

Huntsville, AL

Conference Title

2016 Conference on Systems Engineering Research

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

requirements engineering, functional modeling, controlled English, function ontologies, domain specific modeling

Citation

Denno, P. and Christopher, C. (2016), Validating controlled English statements of requirements using functional models, Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research, Huntsville, AL, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=919983 (Accessed October 9, 2025)