Analyzing semantic relationships between multiformalism models for inconsistency management

The involvement of multiple stakeholders in the design of complex engineered system presents many challenges. One of the challenge is that the overlapping stakeholder concerns leads to semantic relationships appearing between models. From an inconsistency management perspective, it is critical to investigate how these relationships appear and what are their types. Based on a decision-theoretic foundation, this paper investigates the types of semantic relationships between multiformalism models. We argue that the semantic relationships can be formally captured for two cases - between model versions, and between models from a given instant. Further, we argue that semantic overlap for these two cases can be described through three relationships: equivalence, refinement and abstraction. These relationships can lead to the three types of inconsistencies: inconsistent constraints, inconsistent predictions and inconsistencies between specification and analysis. The paper presents a set of generic rules which can be used to detect these inconsistencies.