# Correct-by-construction requirement decomposition

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.02070 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.02070/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 4 Sep 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Taming Silent Failures: A Framework for Verifiable AI Reliability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.22224/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In systems engineering, accurately decomposing requirements is crucial for creating well-defined and manageable system components, particularly in safety-critical domains. Despite the critical need, rigorous, top-down methodologies for effectively breaking down complex requirements into precise, actionable sub-requirements are scarce, especially compared to the wealth of bottom-up verification techniques. Addressing this gap, we introduce a formal decomposition for contract-based design that guarantees the correctness of decomposed requirements if specific conditions are met. Our (semi-)automated methodology augments contract-based design with reachability analysis and constraint programming to systematically identify, verify, and validate sub-requirements representable by continuous bounded sets -- continuous relations between real-valued inputs and outputs. We demonstrate the efficacy and practicality of a correct-by-construction approach through a comprehensive case study on a cruise control system, highlighting how our methodology improves the interpretability, tractability, and verifiability of system requirements.