Towards a Value-Complemented Framework for Enabling Human Monitoring in Cyber-Physical Systems
Zoe Pfister, Michael Vierhauser, Rebekka Wohlrab, Ruth Breu
TL;DR
The paper tackles the challenge of monitoring human actors within CPS without compromising privacy and ethics. It introduces a Value-Complemented Requirements Engineering framework that leverages Schwartz’s value taxonomy and value tactics to connect stakeholder values with monitoring properties and derived requirements. A shop-floor proof-of-concept demonstrates how values influence data collection, consent, and safety constraints, while a research roadmap emphasizes continuous value validation, taxonomy development, and ethics-aware elicitation. The work aims to enable safer, privacy-conscious human–CPS collaboration through structured, traceable, and negotiable monitoring requirements.
Abstract
[Context and Motivation]: Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) have become relevant in a wide variety of different domains, integrating hardware and software, often operating in an emerging and uncertain environment where human actors actively or passively engage with the CPS. To ensure correct and safe operation, and self-adaptation, monitors are used for collecting and analyzing diverse runtime information. [Problem]: However, monitoring humans at runtime, collecting potentially sensitive information about their actions and behavior, comes with significant ramifications that can severely hamper the successful integration of human-machine collaboration. Requirements engineering (RE) activities must integrate diverse human values, including Privacy, Security, and Self-Direction during system design, to avoid involuntary data sharing or misuse. [Principal Ideas]: In this research preview, we focus on the importance of incorporating these aspects in the RE lifecycle of eliciting and creating runtime monitors. [Contribution]: We derived an initial conceptual framework, building on the value taxonomy introduced by Schwartz and human value integrated Software Engineering by Whittle, further leveraging the concept of value tactics. The goal is to tie functional and non-functional monitoring requirements to human values and establish traceability between values, requirements, and actors. Based on this, we lay out a research roadmap guiding our ongoing work in this area.