An ontological metamodeling framework for semantic simulation model engineering

Abstract

Recently, the ontological metamodel plays an increasingly important role to specify systems in two forms: ontology and metamodel. Ontology is a descriptive model representing reality by a set of concepts, their interrelations, and constraints. On the other hand, metamodel is a more classical, but more powerful model in which concepts and relationships are represented in a prescriptive way. This study firstly clarifies the difference between the two approaches, then explains their advantages and limitations, and attempts to explore a general ontological metamodeling framework by integrating each characteristic, in order to implement semantic simulation model engineering. As a proof of concept, this paper takes the combat effectiveness simulation systems as a motivating case, uses the proposed framework to define a set of ontological composable modeling frameworks, and presents an underwater targets search scenario for running simulations and analyzing results. Finally, this paper expects that this framework will be generally used in other fields.