DART: a decentralised application-based requirement traceability framework for cyber-physical system development

Requirement engineering (RE) produces and manages well-defined requirements and is critical in cyber-physical system (CPS) development. Within RE, requirement traceability models fail due to collaboration, trust and privacy issues. The study proposes a decentralised application-based requirement traceability (DART) framework to support CPS development. The DART framework involves an Ethereum blockchain-based decentralised application, an advanced encryption standard (AES) cryptographic algorithm and graph-based representations. The proposed framework can enhance communication and security, positively impacting stakeholder collaboration, trust and decision-making. The privacy feature gives stakeholders confidence in sharing proprietary information, thus enabling continuous and consistent knowledge of the emergent CPS development.