Methods to Register Models and Input/Output Parameters for Integrated Modeling

Significant resources can be required when constructing integrated modeling systems. In a typical application, components (e.g., models and databases) created by different developers are assimilated, requiring the framework’s functionality to bridge the gap between the user’s knowledge of the components being linked. The framework, therefore, needs the capability to assimilate a wide range of model-specific input/output requirements as well as their associated assumptions and constraints. The process of assimilating such disparate components into an integrated modeling framework varies in complexity and difficulty. Several factors influence the relative ease of assimilating components, including, but not limited to, familiarity with the components being assimilated, familiarity with the framework and its tools that support the assimilation process, level of documentation associated with the components and the framework, and design structure of the components and framework. This initial effort reviews different approaches for assimilating models and their model-specific input/output requirements by considering four case study examples: 1) modifying component models to directly communicate with the framework (i.e., through an Application Programming Interface), 2) developing model-specific external wrappers such that no component model modifications are required, 3) using parsing tools to visually map pre-existing input/output files, and 4) describing and linking models as dynamic link libraries. Most of these examples are derived from assimilation efforts for the widely distributed modeling system called Framework for Risk Analysis in Multimedia Environmental Systems (FRAMES). The review concludes that each has its strengths and weakness, the factors that determine which approaches work best in a given application.