Impact of the Semantic Web on Modeling and Simulation

More specifically, this chapter considers the issue of using semantics in Modeling and Simulation (M&S). The impetus for this is the large initiative to develop the next generation Web, the Semantic Web being developed by the Artificial Intelligence, Database and Information Retrieval communities. A complimentary parallel track is represented by the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) approach being developed by OMG and the Software Engineering Community. The goal of this initiate is for all software development to be model driven. Semantics (and the Semantic Web) will likely impact the M&S Community in two ways. First, the community should develop ontology to delineate, define and relate the concepts in the field. Ontology for modeling and simulation should be logically connected to more general (or higherlevel) ontology e.g., one for mathematics such as Monet (Caprotti, Dewar, and Turi 2004) or one for general knowledge upper ontology such as the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) (Niles and Pease 2001). Second, simulation models, model components and other artifacts should be provided with richer semantic descriptions. The least disruptive way to do this is through annotation in which the artifacts refer to semantic models (e.g., a concept in an ontology). The fact that the Semantic Web is being developed and simulation artifacts can be semantically annotated, begs the question of why do it. This question relates to the basic motivation for having the Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services. For the M&S community, semantics represented in ontology provides standard terminology to the community and beyond, so that common understanding of concepts and relationships can be achieved, which, in turn, increases the potential for application interoperability and reuse of simulation artifacts. Semantic Web technology