Self-Adaptation Driven by SysML and Goal Models - A Literature Review

Background: Socio-cyber-physical systems (SCPSs) are a type of cyber-physical systems with social concerns. Many SCPSs, such as smart homes, must be able to adapt to reach an optimal symbiosis with users and their contexts. The Systems Modeling Language (SysML) is frequently used to specify ordinary CPSs, whereas goal modeling is a requirements engineering approach used to describe and reason about social concerns. Objective: This paper aims to assess existing modeling techniques that support adaptation in SCPSs, and in particular those that integrate SysML with goal modeling. Method: A systematic literature review presents the main contributions of 52 English articles selected from five databases that use both SysML and goal models (17 techniques), SysML models only (11 techniques), or goal models only (8 techniques) for analysis and self-adaptation. Result: Existing techniques have provided increasingly better modeling support for adaptation in a SCPS context, but overall analysis support remains weak. The techniques that combine SysML and goal modeling offer interesting benefits by tracing goals to SysML (requirements) diagrams and influencing the generation of predefined adaptation strategies for expected contexts, but few target adaptation explicitly and most still suffer from a partial coverage of important goal modeling concepts and of traceability management issues.