3 research outputs found
Mathematical models as research data via flexiformal theory graphs
Mathematical modeling and simulation (MMS) has now been established as an essential part
of the scientific work in many disciplines. It is common to categorize the involved
numerical data and to some extent the corresponding scientific software as research
data. But both have their origin in mathematical models, therefore any holistic approach
to research data in MMS should cover all three aspects: data, software, and
models. While the problems of classifying, archiving and making accessible are largely
solved for data and first frameworks and systems are emerging for software, the question
of how to deal with mathematical models is completely open.
In this paper we propose a solution -- to cover all aspects of mathematical models: the
underlying mathematical knowledge, the equations, boundary conditions, numeric
approximations, and documents in a flexi\-formal framework, which has enough structure to
support the various uses of models in scientific and technology workflows.
Concretely we propose to use the OMDoc/MMT framework to formalize mathematical models
and show the adequacy of this approach by modeling a simple, but non-trivial model: van
Roosbroeck's drift-diffusion model for one-dimensional devices. This formalization -- and
future extensions -- allows us to support the modeler by e.g. flexibly composing models,
visualizing Model Pathway Diagrams, and annotating model equations in documents as
induced from the formalized documents by flattening. This directly solves some of the
problems in treating MMS as "research data'' and opens the way towards more MKM
services for models