Ontology-driven requirements engineering with reference to the aerospace industry

This paper provides an overview regarding the application of an ontology-driven requirements engineering methodology, namely OntoREM, in the aerospace industry with the objective to assess the extent to which this approach has the potential to develop better quality requirements in less time and at less cost compared to traditional requirements engineering processes, taking the Airbus wing-engineering requirements as the case study. The OntoREM´s Metamodel is briefly introduced, which embodies both the key process and task ontologies that guide the OntoREM related requirements engineering activities along with the supporting tooling environments, both existing and newly developed ones. Finally, the paper provides an overview of a small number of focused case studies in the aerospace context that are currently being undertaken and will help to further evolve and critically evaluate OntoREM with the objective to investigate the potential of a more knowledge-driven as opposed to process-driven approach to RE.