An ontology‐enabled user interface for simulation model construction and visualization

The purpose of an ontology is to structurally define knowledge about a topic. For the practice of simulation, ontologies have been demonstrated to be useful across a variety of techniques ranging from formally defining the components of dynamic models and capturing key simulation domain constraints to interrelating dynamic model components and geometry in order to visualize a phenomenon. We have created a methodology that requires domain ontologies to be rendered in the human‐interface layer in support of the construction of dynamic models and their corresponding visualizations. We hypothesize that this methodology will provide a novel and accessible way to author visualizations and a framework for creating new teaching tools that merge concrete and abstract knowledge. A case study of our methodology is performed by applying our software prototype to simulation and visualization in the domain of healthcare, specifically cardiovascular physiology