An ontology-enabled user interface for simulation model construction and visualization

Abstract

The purpose of an ontology is to structurally define knowledge about a topic. For the practice of simulation, ontologies have been demonstrated to be useful across a variety of techniques ranging from formally defining the components of dynamic models and capturing key simulation domain constraints to interrelating dynamic model components and geometry in order to visualize a phenomenon. We have created a methodology that requires domain ontologies to be rendered in the human-interface layer in support of the construction of dynamic models and their corresponding visualizations. We hypothesize that this methodology will provide a novel and accessible way to author visualizations and a framework for creating new teaching tools that merge concrete and abstract knowledge. A case study of our methodology is performed by applying our software prototype to simulation and visualization in the domain of healthcare, specifically cardiovascular physiology