The GOPCSD Tool: An Integrated Development Environment for Process Control Requirements and Design

Abstract

The GOPCSD (Goal Oriented Process Control Systems Design) tool is an integrated environment, where the process control systems engineer can construct, import, check, reason about, modify, validate requirements specifications and generate in the B specification language a formal specification of such process control requirements. Borrowing from the KAOS method, the GOPCSD tool adopts the goal-oriented hierarchy concept to enable easy tracing of the user needs to the requirements level, as well as the requirements to the design specification level. The tool offers a library and formal and informal checks and tests to aid correction and enhancement of the requirements; in addition, the normal systems engineer can use the tool effectively and automatically generate a B formal specification, thus not demanding a high-level of knowledge about the sophisticated mathematics supporting formal methods like B. © Springer-Verlag 2004.