The current trend to model driven software and system development requires the construction of different kinds of models and model transformations. In order to validate such transformations, behaviour preservation and refinement are important, but often neglected issues.

In this project we concentrate on graph transformation as a modelling language, due to its success in modelling dynamically evolving graphical structures and system architectures. Up to now, however, there is no systematic study of behaviour simulation and equivalence for graph transformation systems. The main aim of this project is to fill this gap and to apply the corresponding results and techniques to the problem of behaviour preservation of model transformations. For this purpose we transfer on the one hand concepts of behaviour simulation from operational semantics defined by rewriting systems and on the other hand concepts of behavioural equivalences from the area of process algebras to the algebraic theory of graph transformations.

In addition to model transformation in general the results will be applied to the special case of model refactoring and to protocol verification. Moreover, tool support will be provided for behaviour simulation and equivalence and the results will be evaluated in several case studies.