Abstract

This paper describes the role of ontologies for (a) the design and (b) the execution - of interoperable simulation applications. The premise of the research described in this paper is that ontologies provide the foundation for determining semantic interoperability and information exchange requirements. Two fundamental problems are inherent to simulation application integration: (i) Semantic Inaccessibility: this problem is caused by the failure to explicitly specify the semantic content of the information contained within each simulation subsystem in a manner that facilitates access and automated understanding by the other subsystems within the integrated simulation application; and (ii) Logical Disconnectedness: this problem is caused by the failure to explicitly represent constraints between the information managed by the different simulation subsystems that are part of the integrated simulation application. The paper will (i) describe the technical challenges that motivate our research; (ii) describe how ontologies (a) facilitate reuse and information sharing during simulation application design and (b) enable effective execution time simulation application mediation and interoperability; (iii) brief description of real world application examples to illustrate the practical benefits of the solution ideas; and (iv) summary of opportunities for future research and development.