SSP Group Meeting
Wednesday, November 18th, 11am-12pm
Division of Informatics, 80 South Bridge, Room F13


 

An Example on Generating Model Parameter Estimation from Formal Ecological Data Descriptions

Virginia Brilhante

In the investigation of ecological modeling automation, one must consider the estimation of model parameters - a key task in many maths oriented modeling paradigms. This talk presents an exploratory example where a parameter estimation process is automatically generated based on declarative formal descriptions of the properties of the data set (ecological meta-data) at hand. The ecological properties are described through classes and relations provided by the Ecolingua Ontology. A small Definite Clause Grammar is used to infer the parameter estimation process; by means of this simple logic-based formalism we are able to reconstruct the inferences that a human modeler would possibly perform to estimate the parameter.

The example is a small demonstration of the feasibility of relating ecological meta-data to model design, which is our ultimate goal.