A Meta-Ontology Framework For Parameter Concepts Of Disease Spread Simulation Models

This work reports on an ontological organization (framework) that separates domain knowledge from knowledge of specific views and formalizes conceptual relationships by linking to the meta-ontology structure. We use parameters of animal disease spread simulation models as an example, although all concepts presented could apply to human disease spread simulation as well. A meta-ontology is created to document parameter concepts in different comparable simulation models. It formalizes relationships between parameter concepts. This offers several advantages such as allowing explicit domain knowledge representation and provenance, allowing for the assessment of parameters with respect to domain knowledge, and assisting in usage and evaluation of the models. The meta-ontology allows views about parameter concepts to be captured. This is important because it establishes a neutral view point which allows the assessment of parameter semantics in respect to documented domain knowledge. While this work uses the domain of animal disease spread, the principles of ontological representation of model parameters is applicable to a wide range of domains.