Describing Models In Context - A Step Towards Enhanced Transparency Of Scientific Processes Underpinning Policy Making

The transparency and reproducibility of scientific evidence underpinning policy is crucial to build and retain trust. This paper describes an application that takes a significant step towards enhanced transparency of scientific models used for policy making: The Modelling Inventory Database and Access Services (MIDAS) developed by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) describes models in use by the JRC in their scientific context by linking them to other models, to related data, to supported policies and to domain experts. To effectively share the resulting knowledge across different domains and with policy makers within the institution MIDAS represents the resulting complex network of relations and entities through visual aids based on visual analytics and data narratives. This paper describes not just the application in order to contribute to emerging dialogue on best practice for model documentation, it describes the process and main challenges we met with, and the approach taken to overcome them.