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An Ontology-Based Approach for Requirements and Change Impact Analysis in SysML Designs

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Abstract

Systems Engineering addresses the design and management of complex systems, in which requirements and change impact analysis play a critical role. Although SysML, widely used in Model-Based Systems Engineering, supports requirements specification and traceability, it lacks formal semantics, preventing automated inference and rigorous impact propagation for advanced analysis. Leveraging Semantic Web technologies enables the formalization of SysML models and the application of reasoning mechanisms for requirements and change impact analysis. This paper proposes an approach that integrates SysML with OWL ontologies to support semantically driven analysis during system design. The main contributions include an ontological representation of requirements, an automatic transformation of SysML requirements diagrams and their trace relationships into OWL, semantic queries for requirements analysis, and semantic rules and queries for change impact formalization and analysis. The proposed approach is supported by a dedicated tool and is validated through a case study demonstrating its effectiveness in generating OWL ontologies from SysML requirement diagrams, detecting requirement inconsistencies, supporting verification and validation activities, and analyzing change impact.

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Data availability

All data included in this research are available upon reasonable request by contact with the corresponding author.

Abbreviations

DL:

Description logic

DSM:

Dependency structure matrix

KAOS:

Knowledge acquisition in automated specification

MBSE:

Model-based systems engineering

MDE:

Model driven engineering

NLP:

Natural language processing

OWL:

Web ontology language

RDF:

Resource description framework

SPARQL:

SPARQL protocol and RDF query language

SWRL:

Semantic web rule language

SysML:

Systems modeling language

UML:

Unified modeling language

XML:

Extensible markup language

R :

Requirement

\(R_i,R_j\) :

Requirements (indices i, j)

E :

Design element (e.g., block, use case, activity)

B :

SysML block

T :

Test-case

C :

Change operation

D :

Degree of impact (value in the range [0, 1])

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Acknowledgements

This research was carried out as part of the activities of the MOVEP laboratory, USTHB university, Algeria. We want to show our gratitude to Prof Malika Boukala Ioualalen, director of the MOVEP labortory.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Author notes

  1. M. Rahim, A. Hammad, P-C. Heam, M. Boukala-Ioualalen have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mathematics and Computer Science Department, University of Medea, Médéa, 26000, Algeria

    Messaoud Rahim

  2. MOVEP laboratory, USTHB, Algiers, Algeria

    Messaoud Rahim & Malika Boukala-Ioualalen

  3. FEMTO-ST Institute, UMR CNRS, 6174, Besançon, France

    Ahmed Hammad & Pierre-Cyrille Heam

Authors
  1. Messaoud Rahim
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  2. Ahmed Hammad
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  3. Pierre-Cyrille Heam
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  4. Malika Boukala-Ioualalen
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Contributions

All authors contributed to develop the main idea of this work, therefore contributed to its conception and its design. Material preparation and the writing of the first version of the main manuscript were performed by Messaoud Rahim. Ahmed Hammad and Pierre-Cyrille Heam have commented on previous versions of the manuscript, improved its quality and defined its final structure. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Messaoud Rahim.

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Rahim, M., Hammad, A., Heam, PC. et al. An Ontology-Based Approach for Requirements and Change Impact Analysis in SysML Designs. SN COMPUT. SCI. 7, 306 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-026-04881-1

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