WATCHDOG: An ontology-aWare risk AssessmenT approaCH via object-oriented DisruptiOn Graphs

Stefano M. Nicoletti; E. Moritz Hahn; Mattia Fumagalli; Giancarlo Guizzardi; Mariëlle Stoelinga

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-94571-7_18

WATCHDOG: An ontology-aWare risk AssessmenT approaCH via object-oriented DisruptiOn Graphs

Stefano M. Nicoletti^*
, E. Moritz Hahn
, Mattia Fumagalli
, Giancarlo Guizzardi
, Mariëlle Stoelinga

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

1 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

When considering risky events or actions, we must not downplay the role of involved objects: a charged battery in our phone averts the risk of being stranded in the desert after a flat tyre, and a functional firewall mitigates the risk of a hacker intruding the network. The Common Ontology of Value and Risk (COVER) highlights how the role of objects and their relationships remains pivotal to performing transparent, complete and accountable risk assessment. In this paper, we operationalize some of the notions proposed by COVER – such as parthood between objects and participation of objects in events/actions – by presenting a new framework for risk assessment: WATCHDOG. WATCHDOG enriches the expressivity of vetted formal models for risk – i.e., fault trees and attack trees – by bridging the disciplines of ontology and formal methods into an ontology-aware formal framework composed by a more expressive modelling formalism, Object-Oriented Disruption Graphs (DOGs), logic (DOGLog) and an intermediate query language (DOGLang). With these, WATCHDOG allows risk assessors to pose questions about disruption propagation, disruption likelihood and risk levels, keeping the fundamental role of objects at risk always in sight.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Advanced Information Systems Engineering
Subtitle of host publication	37th International Conference, CAiSE 2025, Vienna, Austria, June 16-20, 2025. Proceedings, Part II
Editors	John Krogstie, Stefanie Rinderle-Ma, Gerti Kappel, Henderik A. Proper
Place of Publication	Cham, Switzerland
Publisher	Springer
Pages	314-331
Number of pages	18
ISBN (Electronic)	978-3-031-94571-7
ISBN (Print)	978-3-031-94573-1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-94571-7_18
Publication status	Published - 15 Jun 2025
Event	37th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE 2025 - Vienna, Austria Duration: 16 Jun 2025 → 20 Jun 2025 Conference number: 37

Publication series

Name	Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Volume	15702 LNCS
ISSN (Print)	0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)	1611-3349

Conference

Conference	37th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE 2025
Abbreviated title	CAiSE 2025
Country/Territory	Austria
City	Vienna
Period	16/06/25 → 20/06/25

Keywords

2025 OA procedure
COVER
fault trees
logic
ontology
risk
attack trees

Access to Document

10.1007/978-3-031-94571-7_18

978-3-031-94571-7_18Final published version, 666 KBLicence: Taverne

Cite this

Nicoletti, S. M., Hahn, E. M., Fumagalli, M., Guizzardi, G., & Stoelinga, M. (2025). WATCHDOG: An ontology-aWare risk AssessmenT approaCH via object-oriented DisruptiOn Graphs. In J. Krogstie, S. Rinderle-Ma, G. Kappel, & H. A. Proper (Eds.), Advanced Information Systems Engineering: 37th International Conference, CAiSE 2025, Vienna, Austria, June 16-20, 2025. Proceedings, Part II (pp. 314-331). (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Vol. 15702 LNCS). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-94571-7_18

Nicoletti, Stefano M. ; Hahn, E. Moritz ; Fumagalli, Mattia et al. / WATCHDOG : An ontology-aWare risk AssessmenT approaCH via object-oriented DisruptiOn Graphs. Advanced Information Systems Engineering: 37th International Conference, CAiSE 2025, Vienna, Austria, June 16-20, 2025. Proceedings, Part II. editor / John Krogstie ; Stefanie Rinderle-Ma ; Gerti Kappel ; Henderik A. Proper. Cham, Switzerland : Springer, 2025. pp. 314-331 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

@inproceedings{a4c6c70dccbb48af82e1d182f740c3b0,

title = "WATCHDOG: An ontology-aWare risk AssessmenT approaCH via object-oriented DisruptiOn Graphs",

abstract = "When considering risky events or actions, we must not downplay the role of involved objects: a charged battery in our phone averts the risk of being stranded in the desert after a flat tyre, and a functional firewall mitigates the risk of a hacker intruding the network. The Common Ontology of Value and Risk (COVER) highlights how the role of objects and their relationships remains pivotal to performing transparent, complete and accountable risk assessment. In this paper, we operationalize some of the notions proposed by COVER – such as parthood between objects and participation of objects in events/actions – by presenting a new framework for risk assessment: WATCHDOG. WATCHDOG enriches the expressivity of vetted formal models for risk – i.e., fault trees and attack trees – by bridging the disciplines of ontology and formal methods into an ontology-aware formal framework composed by a more expressive modelling formalism, Object-Oriented Disruption Graphs (DOGs), logic (DOGLog) and an intermediate query language (DOGLang). With these, WATCHDOG allows risk assessors to pose questions about disruption propagation, disruption likelihood and risk levels, keeping the fundamental role of objects at risk always in sight.",

keywords = "2025 OA procedure, COVER, fault trees, logic, ontology, risk, attack trees",

author = "Nicoletti, \{Stefano M.\} and Hahn, \{E. Moritz\} and Mattia Fumagalli and Giancarlo Guizzardi and Mari{\"e}lle Stoelinga",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.; 37th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE 2025, CAiSE 2025 ; Conference date: 16-06-2025 Through 20-06-2025",

year = "2025",

month = jun,

day = "15",

doi = "10.1007/978-3-031-94571-7\_18",

language = "English",

isbn = "978-3-031-94573-1",

series = "Lecture Notes in Computer Science",

publisher = "Springer",

pages = "314--331",

editor = "John Krogstie and Stefanie Rinderle-Ma and Gerti Kappel and Proper, \{Henderik A.\}",

booktitle = "Advanced Information Systems Engineering",

address = "Germany",

}

Nicoletti, SM, Hahn, EM, Fumagalli, M, Guizzardi, G & Stoelinga, M 2025, WATCHDOG: An ontology-aWare risk AssessmenT approaCH via object-oriented DisruptiOn Graphs. in J Krogstie, S Rinderle-Ma, G Kappel & HA Proper (eds), Advanced Information Systems Engineering: 37th International Conference, CAiSE 2025, Vienna, Austria, June 16-20, 2025. Proceedings, Part II. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 15702 LNCS, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 314-331, 37th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE 2025, Vienna, Austria, 16/06/25. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-94571-7_18

WATCHDOG: An ontology-aWare risk AssessmenT approaCH via object-oriented DisruptiOn Graphs. / Nicoletti, Stefano M.; Hahn, E. Moritz; Fumagalli, Mattia et al.
Advanced Information Systems Engineering: 37th International Conference, CAiSE 2025, Vienna, Austria, June 16-20, 2025. Proceedings, Part II. ed. / John Krogstie; Stefanie Rinderle-Ma; Gerti Kappel; Henderik A. Proper. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2025. p. 314-331 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Vol. 15702 LNCS).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

TY - GEN

T1 - WATCHDOG

T2 - 37th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE 2025

AU - Nicoletti, Stefano M.

AU - Hahn, E. Moritz

AU - Fumagalli, Mattia

AU - Guizzardi, Giancarlo

AU - Stoelinga, Mariëlle

N1 - Conference code: 37

PY - 2025/6/15

Y1 - 2025/6/15

N2 - When considering risky events or actions, we must not downplay the role of involved objects: a charged battery in our phone averts the risk of being stranded in the desert after a flat tyre, and a functional firewall mitigates the risk of a hacker intruding the network. The Common Ontology of Value and Risk (COVER) highlights how the role of objects and their relationships remains pivotal to performing transparent, complete and accountable risk assessment. In this paper, we operationalize some of the notions proposed by COVER – such as parthood between objects and participation of objects in events/actions – by presenting a new framework for risk assessment: WATCHDOG. WATCHDOG enriches the expressivity of vetted formal models for risk – i.e., fault trees and attack trees – by bridging the disciplines of ontology and formal methods into an ontology-aware formal framework composed by a more expressive modelling formalism, Object-Oriented Disruption Graphs (DOGs), logic (DOGLog) and an intermediate query language (DOGLang). With these, WATCHDOG allows risk assessors to pose questions about disruption propagation, disruption likelihood and risk levels, keeping the fundamental role of objects at risk always in sight.

AB - When considering risky events or actions, we must not downplay the role of involved objects: a charged battery in our phone averts the risk of being stranded in the desert after a flat tyre, and a functional firewall mitigates the risk of a hacker intruding the network. The Common Ontology of Value and Risk (COVER) highlights how the role of objects and their relationships remains pivotal to performing transparent, complete and accountable risk assessment. In this paper, we operationalize some of the notions proposed by COVER – such as parthood between objects and participation of objects in events/actions – by presenting a new framework for risk assessment: WATCHDOG. WATCHDOG enriches the expressivity of vetted formal models for risk – i.e., fault trees and attack trees – by bridging the disciplines of ontology and formal methods into an ontology-aware formal framework composed by a more expressive modelling formalism, Object-Oriented Disruption Graphs (DOGs), logic (DOGLog) and an intermediate query language (DOGLang). With these, WATCHDOG allows risk assessors to pose questions about disruption propagation, disruption likelihood and risk levels, keeping the fundamental role of objects at risk always in sight.

KW - 2025 OA procedure

KW - COVER

KW - fault trees

KW - logic

KW - ontology

KW - risk

KW - attack trees

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105009225692

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-031-94571-7_18

DO - 10.1007/978-3-031-94571-7_18

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:105009225692

SN - 978-3-031-94573-1

T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science

SP - 314

EP - 331

BT - Advanced Information Systems Engineering

A2 - Krogstie, John

A2 - Rinderle-Ma, Stefanie

A2 - Kappel, Gerti

A2 - Proper, Henderik A.

PB - Springer

CY - Cham, Switzerland

Y2 - 16 June 2025 through 20 June 2025

ER -

Nicoletti SM, Hahn EM, Fumagalli M, Guizzardi G , Stoelinga M. WATCHDOG: An ontology-aWare risk AssessmenT approaCH via object-oriented DisruptiOn Graphs. In Krogstie J, Rinderle-Ma S, Kappel G, Proper HA, editors, Advanced Information Systems Engineering: 37th International Conference, CAiSE 2025, Vienna, Austria, June 16-20, 2025. Proceedings, Part II. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. 2025. p. 314-331. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-94571-7_18

WATCHDOG: An ontology-aWare risk AssessmenT approaCH via object-oriented DisruptiOn Graphs

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

Keywords

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

An Ontological Model of the Phishing Attack Process

Watchdog: An ontology-aWare risk AssessmenT approaCH via object-oriented DisruptiOn Graphs

Cite this