Investigating Ontologies for Discrete Event Simulation

Discrete-event simulation (DES) is a technique that is widely used in the UK to analyse problems in diverse areas such as commerce, defence, manufacturing and transportation. Commercial-off-the-shelf Discrete-Event Simulation Packages (CSPs) are software tools that support the development of discrete-event models of systems and their simulation. A typical simulation study will involve data from several sources, one or more verified and validated models (and their revisions), experiments, results and their interpretation, reports and, perhaps most importantly, people. DES consultants, consultancies and departments within organisations will have many combinations of these that have accrued over the years. The problem is how to effectively organise all these artefacts of DES projects so that their meaning and context within a project can be preserved. The proposed visit by Professor Paul Fishwick presents a unique opportunity to establish the foundations of a novel approach to this problem by investigating the appropriateness of simulation ontologies developed in the USA (Fishwick and Miller, 2004) to the principles and practice of DES. It is anticipated that research issues of simulation interoperability, composability and reuse, and future productivity tools such as search engines for simulation projects will be facilitated by this research.