In virtuo Experiments Based on the Multi-Interaction System Framework: the RéISCOP Meta-Model.

Abstract

Virtual reality can enable computer scientists and domain experts to perform in virtuo experiments of numerical models of complex systems. Such dynamical and interactive experiments are indeed needed when it comes to com- plex systems with complex dynamics and structures. In this context, the question of the modeling tool to study such models is crucial. Such tool, called a virtuo- scope, must enable the virtual experimentation of models inside a conceptual and experimental framework for imagining, modeling and experimenting the complex- ity of the studied systems. This article describes a conceptual framework and a meta model, called ReISCOP, that enable the construction and simulation of mod- els of biological, chemical or physical systems. The multi-interaction conceptual framework, based on the reification of interactions, is built upon the concepts of autonomy, structural coupling and synchronous scheduling of those reified inter- actions. Applications and virtual reality experiments described in the last section show the expressiveness of this approach and its capacity to actually formulate het- erogeneous models in heterogeneous time and space scales, which is required for studying biological complex systems.