Using the Shapes Constraint Language for modelling regulatory requirements

TL;DR

This paper explores using the Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL) for modeling regulatory requirements, highlighting its advantages over OWL in representing rules with closed world semantics and ease of maintenance.

Contribution

It demonstrates how SHACL can effectively model complex regulations, enabling compliance verification and easier maintenance by domain experts without ontology expertise.

Findings

SHACL models facilitate compliance checking against regulations.

SHACL offers better maintainability for domain experts.

Compared to OWL, SHACL supports closed world assumptions.

Abstract

Ontologies are traditionally expressed in the Web Ontology Language (OWL), that provides a syntax for expressing taxonomies with axioms regulating class membership. The semantics of OWL, based on Description Logic (DL), allows for the use of automated reasoning to check the consistency of ontologies, perform classification, and to answer DL queries. However, the open world assumption of OWL, along with limitations in its expressiveness, makes OWL less suitable for modelling rules and regulations, used in public administration. In such cases, it is desirable to have closed world semantics and a rule-based engine to check compliance with regulations. In this paper we describe and discuss data model management using the Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL), for concept modelling of concrete requirements in regulation documents within the public sector. We show how complex regulations, often containing a number of alternative requirements, can be expressed as constraints, and the utility of SHACL engines in verification of instance data against the SHACL model. We discuss benefits of modelling with SHACL, compared to OWL, and demonstrate the maintainability of the SHACL model by domain experts without prior knowledge of ontology management.