A Preparatory Study Towards a Body of Knowledge in the Field of Formal Methods for the Railway Domain

Abstract

Bodies or Books of Knowledge (BoKs) have only been transcribed in mature fields where practices and rules have been well established (settled) and are gathered for any prospective or current practitioner to refer to. As a precursor to creating a BoK, it is first important to know if the domain contains settled knowledge and how this knowledge can be isolated? One approach, as described in this work, is to use Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) to structure the knowledge (or parts of it) and construct a pruned concept lattice to highlight patterns of use and filter out the common and established practices that best suit the solving of a problem within the domain. In the railway domain, formal methods have been applied for a number of years to solve various modelling and verification problems. Their common use and straightforward application (with some refinement) makes them easy to identify and therefore a prime candidate to test for settled knowledge within the railway domain. They also provide other assurances of settled knowledge along the way.