Serializations

Permanent IRI

https://w3id.org/OntoGSN/ontology always serves the current version

SHACL shapes

validate assurance-case data

OntoGSN is an ontology for enabling users to manage (i.e., create, maintain, align, evaluate, explain and display) GSN assurance cases semantically.

What it gives you

• Graph-native cases

  Store and query assurance cases as graph data. Stored SPARQL queries answer common questions about a case.

• Readable and visual

  A human-readable representation of the domain that tools can draw as a tree.

• One store for everything

  Link claims and evidence to data, documents and code in one place.

• Logic-based checks

  SWRL rules for reasoners, the same rules as SPARQL updates for stores without one, and SHACL shapes for validating case data.

• Ready for new methods

  A foundation for advanced methods such as GraphRAG.

• Open tooling

  An active, mostly open-source ecosystem of editors, stores and reasoners.

Work with it

Workbench

• OntoGSN Workbench

In the browser

• Playground
• Tutorial

Source

• Repository
• Design record

Grounded in the standard

Every term is sourced from the GSN Community Standard v3, across its five sections: core GSN and the argument pattern, modular, confidence and dialectic extensions. A design record traces each axiom to the passage of the standard behind it, and records the reasoning.

The ontology acts as a "translator" (i.e., middleware) between a system and its assurance case, and as a validator for the rules of the standard. You do not need to write a separate interface for each system, or update the assurance case by hand. Because the ontology carries the updates, you can follow the system's design, implementation, testing and runtime from the assurance case tree itself. This suits auditors, safety and security engineers, and other supervisory or monitoring roles.

How to cite

To cite the approach, cite the paper:

Bueno Momčilović, T., Gallina, B., Kessler, I., Hendricks, J., & Balta, D. (2025). OntoGSN: An Ontology-Based Framework for Semantic Management and Extension of Assurance Cases. arXiv preprint (v2). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.11023

To cite the ontology itself, for example a version that you use, cite the release:

Bueno Momčilović, T. (2026). OntoGSN (Version 1.3.0) [Ontology]. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17808330

The paper

• arXiv:2506.11023

a third version of the paper is in preparation

The ontology

• DOI 10.5281/zenodo.17808330

this DOI always resolves to the newest release

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to:

• Prof. Barbara Gallina, Ingmar Kessler, and Dian Balta for contributions to the ontology and the paper;
• Jule Hendricks for contributions to the code;
• Yannick Landeck, Radouane Bouchekir, Tewodros Beyene, Carmen Carlan, and Laure Millet for reviewing various iterations of the contributions;
• Will Franks (Adelard / NCC Group) and Ewen Denney (NASA Ames) for providing access to the tools of their respective organizations;
• Damir Safin for technical support.

This work was partially supported by financial and other means by the following research projects: DUCA (EU grant agreement 101086308), DiProLeA (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, grant 02J19B120 ff), ROBIN at the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation, ∞ COMPASS (#49 project at Software Center, Sweden), as well as our industrial partners in the FinComp project.