In dependable systems engineering safety assessment of complex designs that involve software and hardware components is one of the most difficult tasks required. Due to the different modelling languages and models that are used for complementary tasks, the model and specification artefacts are not easily shared by the experts involved in the design process. Moreover, the structural and semantic differences of the used language representations open a possibility for inconsistencies between the corresponding models. This work explores the role of an ontology representation of component failure behaviour as a basis for automated model transformations, as well as a library of reusable knowledge artefacts to be used in different modelling languages and models. The presented approach was motivated by recent findings and requirements derived from European industrial-driven research and development projects

This work is partly funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) Contract Ref: RFQ3-12080/07/NL/FM/na.