Computational Challenges In Modeling And Simulation
Conceptual Modeling Over the past decade, within the modeling and simulation community there has been a growing interest in, and concern about “conceptual modeling.” Generally accepted as crucial for any modeling and simulation project addressing a large and complex problem, conceptual modeling is not well-defined, nor is there a consensus on best practices. “Important” and “not well understood” would seem to qualify conceptual modeling as a target for focused research. Some workshop participants defined conceptual models as “early stage” artifacts that integrate and provide requirements for a variety of more specialized models. In this view, conceptual models provide a foundation from which more formal and more detailed abstractions can be developed, and eventually elaborated into analysis models (e.g., for simulation). However, workshop discussion led us to recognize that “early” and “late” are relative terms that apply within each stage of development. For example,...