Towards an Ontology-Based Platform for Integrating Infectious Disease Simulation Models

The control of infectious diseases is a perpetual challenge in public health. The need to understand their complex dynamics and the imperative to develop epidemiological surveillance, control and mitigation strategies often require modeling and numerical simulation activities. However, it should be noted that modeling and simulation of such complex systems requires expert skills in modeling tools and simulation platforms. This is often a stumbling block for practitioners and beginners in the field. In addition, communication between modelers and domain experts can be complicated by differences in the languages and concepts used on both sides. In this paper, we present an ongoing project aimed at providing solutions to these complications in order to facilitate the infectious disease modeling exercise, simplify the model simulation process, foster collaboration between researchers (practitioners and “modelers”) and enable reproducibility and reuse of models and model parts. To implement this project, we are setting up a web-based platform for the integration of infectious disease simulation models. The microservices architecture we have proposed for this platform includes a simulation model repository, an ontology for annotating these models, and a set of services enabling autonomous orchestration of simulations by ensuring the selection, comparison, possible composition, formulation and simulation of models in dedicated simulators.