# Early Validation of High-level System Requirements with Event Calculus and Answer Set Programming

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.09909 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.09909/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 19 Aug 2024.

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

- [VECSR: Virtually Embodied Common Sense Reasoning System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.02144/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper proposes a new methodology for early validation of high-level requirements on cyber-physical systems with the aim of improving their quality and, thus, lowering chances of specification errors propagating into later stages of development where it is much more expensive to fix them. The paper presents a transformation of a real-world requirements specification of a medical device-a PCA pump-into an Event Calculus model that is then evaluated using answer set programming and the s(CASP) system. The evaluation under s(CASP) allowed deductive as well as abductive reasoning about the specified functionality of the PCA pump on the conceptual level with minimal implementation or design dependent influences, and led to fully-automatically detected nuanced violations of critical safety properties. Further, the paper discusses scalability and non-termination challenges that had to be faced in the evaluation and techniques proposed to (partially) solve them. Finally, ideas for improving s(CASP) to overcome its evaluation limitations that still persist as well as to increase its expressiveness are presented.