Abstract
The main problem encountered when starting verification of goals for some formal system, is the ambiguity of those goals when they are specified in natural language. To verify goals given in natural language, a translation of those goals to the formalism of the verification tool is required. The main concern is to assure equivalence of the final translation and the original. A structured method is required to assure equivalence in every case.
This article proposes a goal formalisation method in five steps, in which the domain expert is involved in such a way that the correctness of the result can be assured. The contribution of this article is a conceptual goal model, a formal expression language for this model, and a structured method which transforms any input goal to a fully formalised goal in the required target formalism. The proposed formalisation method guarantees essential properties like correctness, traceability, reduced variability and reusability.
This work has been partially supported by the European Commission’s IST program, under contract number IST-FP6-508794 Protocure-II.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Stegers, R.: From natural language to formal proof goal: Structured goal formalisation applied to medical guidelines. Master’s thesis, Free University Amsterdam, department of artificial intelligence (2006), Available from: http://www.stegers.info/Ruud/MastersThesis.pdf
ten Teije, A., et al.: Improving medical protocols by formal methods. Artificial Intelligence In Medicine 36(3), 193–209 (2006)
Deliverable D4.2: Specification of guideline properties & indicators, Protocure Project-II, IST-FP6-508794 (2006), http://www.protocure.org/
Balser, M.: Verifying Concurrent Systems with Symbolic Execution. PhD thesis, University of Augsburg, Augsburg (2005)
Shahar, Y., Miksch, S., Johnson, P.: The asgaard project: A task-specific framework for the application and critiquing of time-oriented clinical guidelines. Artificial Intelligence in Medicine 14, 29–51 (1998)
George, V., Vaughn, R.: Application of lightweight formal methods in requirement engineering. CrossTalk. The Journal of Defence Software Engineering (2003)
Bryant, B.R.: Object-oriented natural language requirements specification, Canberra, Australia (2000)
Cooper, K., Ito, M.: Formalizing a structured natural language requirements specification notation. In: Twelfth Annual International Symposium of the International Council On Systems Engineering (INCOSE), Las Vegas, Nevada USA (2002)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Stegers, R., ten Teije, A., van Harmelen, F. (2006). From Natural Language to Formal Proof Goal. In: Staab, S., Svátek, V. (eds) Managing Knowledge in a World of Networks. EKAW 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4248. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11891451_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11891451_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-46363-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46365-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)