U.S. Federal and state regulations impose mandatory and discretionary requirements on industrywide business practices to achieve non-functional, societal goals such as improved accessibility, privacy and safety. The structure and syntax of regulations affects how well software engineers identify and interpret legal requirements. Inconsistent interpretations can lead to noncompliance and violations of the law. To support software engineers who must comply with these regulations, I propose a Frame-Based Requirements Analysis Method (FBRAM) to acquire and specify legal requirements from U.S. federal regulatory documents. The legal requirements are systematically specified using a reusable, domain-independent upper ontology, natural language phrase heuristics, a regulatory document model and a frame-based markup language. The methodology maintains traceability from regulatory statements and phrases to formal properties in a frame-based model and supports the resolution of multiple types of legal ambiguity. The methodology is supported by a software prototype to assist engineers with applying the model and with analyzing legal requirements. This work is validated in three domains, information privacy, information accessibility and aviation safety, which are governed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998, and the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, respectively.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-02052009-190839 |
| Date | 22 April 2009 |
| Creators | Breaux, Travis |
| Contributors | Jon Doyle, Eugene H. Spafford, Annie I. Antón, David L. Baumer, Mladen A. Vouk |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-02052009-190839/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dis sertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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