Standards Working Group

Overview

The Standards Working Group (SWG) oversees the adoption, dissemination, and administration of Open Modeling Foundation standards for access, documentation, reusability, and interoperability. It proposes standards to be reviewed, revised, and approved by the OMF Members Council. The SWG works with Administrative Coordinator to communicate proposed and adopted OMF standards to OMF member organizations and other stakeholders, and solicit input about proposed standards from the modeling community. In coordination with the Certification Working Group, it helps OMF member (and other) code repositories implement OMF standards for access, discoverability, and recognition of model developers who implement OMF best practice standards.

View schematic of potential standards-making workflow

If you are interested in joining the Standards Working Group, please use this link or reach out to any of the group Co-Chairs for further information.

Contribute to the Standards Working Group discussion on GitHub

Standards Co-Chairs

Volker Grimm

• Ecological modeller and professor of Theoretical Ecology
• Works on modelling methodology, in particular agent-based modelling
• Main developer of the standards ODD and TRACE

Serena Hamilton

• Focuses on the use of model-based approaches to make better informed decisions about socio-environmental problems
• Particularly interested in integrated assessment and modelling for co-production of knowledge in transdisciplinary research, and identifying and promoting best practices in modelling development and evaluation
• Managing editor of the open access journal Socio-Environmental Systems Modelling (SESMO)

Geerten Hengeveld

• Using models to support people in making sense of socio-ecological systems
• Experience in socio-ecological systems across scales and in Experience in model quality assurance
• Executive manager of LTER-LIFE – developing an infrastructure where researchers can build digital twins of ecosystems

Maria Pierce

• Ecological modeller and works on modelling and simulation workflows
• Currently develops the work area Individual-Based (and other) Modelling at the Thünen Institute of Baltic Sea Fisheries
• Participates in expert groups of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES)

Current Developments

SWG has more than 50 members. We are working, in sub-groups, on several manuscripts which are meant to prepare the first standards proposed by OMF:

• A review of existing modelling standards to identify the main challenges in establishing standards and the main dimensions of the context in which standards are developed and needed (S. Hamilton, C. Rosello).
• The development of a non-technical common language, or “lingua franca”, for short but informative summary descriptions, which would facilitate communication and collaboration between different modelling communities, and with model users (V. Grimm).
• The introduction of a tiered approach, where the effort for following Good Modelling Practice should be proportional to the expected impact of the model (G. Hengeveld).
• Developing a standard format that helps us to be explicit also about hidden model assumptions, i.e. assumptions that are implicit but can still strongly affect model results (B. Edmonds).
• Devil’s advocate: It has been tried for decades to establish modelling standards, with limited success so far. Is it impossible? Here we try to identify the main obstacles and thereby learn from the past (A. Voinov).

Previous Projects

Not applicable yet - works are sill in development “Watch this space!”