Abstract
Requirements management is a primary challenge for the industrial
enterprise. Development and operation of a capital asset involves tens of
thousands of requirements, spanning multiple engineering domains. Requirements
are issued by a variety of sources, including public authorities, standards
bodies, operators, contractors and suppliers. With manual work processes and
unsatisfactory coordination across stake-holders, requirements are a major
source of cost. In this talk, we will describe how an ontology-based approach to
digitalisation of requirements has been developed for the Norwegian Oil & Gas
industry. We outline the methodology, and demonstrate a working prototype for
developing, testing, and implementing digital standards. We also make a bold
claim: that the standards of the future will be provided as ontologies.
In response to a well documented need for more cost effective requirements
management in Oil & Gas, a joint industry project (JIP) has been established for
the Norwegian Continental Shelf, to revise, restructure and digitalise the
NORSOK Z-standards for Technical Information. Initiated by Standards Norway and
DNV GL, and in close collaboration with the academic community and the Sirius
research centre in Oslo, the JIP has found broad industry support. O&G
authorities, the main operators, and the main engineering, procurement, and
construction (EPC) contractors have signed up for a two-year common effort.
An efficient representation of requirements must be at the same time generic
and sensitive to the characteristics of special subjects, whether in technical
domains or in the management of asset information. This means that we need a
common, multidisplinary vocabulary, uniform representation of requirements as
rules, and a precise way to validate consistency and correctness of a set of
requirements.
Ontologies in OWL DL fit the description for going from documents to
databases. The distinguished feature is automated reasoning with description
logic semantics. A modular ontology provides a multi-disciplinary vocabulary of
class definitions, suitable for automated consistency checking against an asset
described in that vocabulary. In the Norwegian O&G space we already have
large-scale systems in production, applying reasoning over ontologies to support
EPC projects.
Extending this basis to requirements, we need to manage normative modalities
- requirements, as norms, are not always satisfied. We need algorithms to
mangage defeasible constraints and agreed deviations from specifications. For
this, a methodology has been developed, drawing on ISO/IEC 81346 for lifecycle
perspectives and on the INCOSE Guide for Writing Requirements. A generic
ontology for representing requirements has been created. OWL DL reasoning lets
the computer derive which requirements apply to a type of equipment, or which
requirements apply to a selected component; and in cases of deviation, the
reasoner mechanism can identify where requirements are violated, and why.
A prototype implementation to support this methodology has been built, and
will be demonstrated during the presentation at SemWeb.Pro. This includes a
modular ontology, an expert friendly Excel format for building ontolgies from
straightforward templates, and end-user services for stating, verifying, and
testing a body of requirements. We obtain a tool for creating digital standards
that are suitable for for use with existing software application and databases,
as well as for information exchange.
#### Références
* Methodology and implementation for the NORSOK Z-TI standards, please note that a live demo can be made if suitable for the conference presentation format, but a video or on-line links are not yet available.
* [NORSOK](https://www.dnvgl.com/oilgas/joint-industry-projects/other/norsok-z-ti-shaping-the-future-of-standards-and-requirements.htm) :Requirements JIP, 2018-2020
* [Aker Solutions PUSH project](https://www.dnvgl.com/Images/Point-of-view%20Aker%20Solutions%20PUSH_tcm8-122111.pdf)
* [DNV GL](https://www.dnvgl.com/)
* [Sirius Centre for Scalable Data Access](http://sirius-labs.no/) in the Oil and Gas Domain
* [Reasonable Ontology Templates (OTTR)](http://www.ottr.xyz/)
#### Auteurs/Autrices
**Johan W. Klüwer**, Dr. philos., is a principal specialist with
DNV GL Digital Solutions. Since 2006, he has been engaged in making ontologies
work for industrial applications. This includes implementation for Oil & Gas
capital projects, adopting the ISO 15926 standard for OWL DL, and methodological
work, most recently in contributions to Reasonable Ontology Templates (OTTR).