Ontology-Based Reasoning about the Trustworthiness of Cyber-Physical Systems

It has been challenging for the technical and regulatory communities to formulate requirements for trustworthiness of the cyber-physical systems (CPS) due to the complexity of the issues associated with their design, deployment, and operations. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), through a public working group, has released a CPS Framework that adopts a broad and integrated view of CPS and positions trustworthiness among other aspects of CPS. This paper takes the model created by the CPS Framework and its further developments one step further, by applying ontological approaches and reasoning techniques in order to achieve greater understanding of CPS. The example analyzed in the paper demonstrates the enrichment of the original CPS model obtained through ontology and reasoning and its ability to deliver additional insights to the developers and operators of CPS.