Potential modeling and simulation applications of the Web ontology language - OWL

The semantic Web is an evolution of the current world-wide web that provides explicit semantics that enable software applications to better process information representations. The Web ontology language - OWL - is a new language for representing information on the semantic Web. Modeling and simulation (M&S) applications have many information representation challenges. Examples of M&S data include data tables from authoritative data sources, behaviors for computer generated forces, and descriptions of units and entities to be simulated. OWL provides a consistent syntax using the resource description framework (RDF) and predefined constructs with standard semantics. These features enable better information sharing and support reasoning by inferencing systems. OWL is best used for representing object-oriented descriptions of items in a well-defined domain. It could be used in the M&S community to support distributed representations of data, behaviors, descriptions of units and objects to be simulated, and scenarios with initial conditions.