The simulation scenario ontology aims to provide structures for modeling of energy system simulation scenarios as part of the NFDI4Energy plattform. We decided to implement the simulation scenario ontology directly in the Open Energy Ontology (OEO). Thus, this repository is not containing the ontology itself, but gives an overview over requirements, documents, discussions, and the implemented concepts.
The ontology development follows the Linked Open Terms (LOT) methodology described in [3]. Starting from a review of existing ontologies and their suitability for co-simulation scenario definition [1], we design the ontology to provide a semantic framework for describing, sharing, comparing, and executing simulation scenarios, aiming to improve interoperability and reproducibility. In the development process, concepts are first discussed and sketched on a Conceptboard, then refined and tracked in dedicated issues on the OEO GitHub repository, where they are discussed, approved, and finally released through pull requests. All discussions in the OEO repository are collected in the meta issue: OpenEnergyPlatform/ontology#2089
In NFDI4Energy the focus lies on the co-simulation frameworks DaceDSX, VILLAS, and mosaik, but the outcomes aim to allow also the integration of other frameworks.
Thus, we will add instructions on how to use our developments with other frameworks here in the future.
As a first step towards developing the simulation scenario ontology, we reviewed existing ontologies and evaluated their relevance for definition of simulation scenarios. The relevant ontologies are listed below and described in [1]:
| Ontology | Link | Last Update | Open Source | License | Literature |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| COSMO | - | - | No | No | Y. M. Teo and C. Szabo, „CODES: An integrated approach to composable modeling and simulation“, Proc. - Simul. Symp., S. 103–110, 2008, doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/ANSS-41.2008.24. |
| DEMO | https://cobweb.cs.uga.edu/~jam/jsim/DeMO/ | ? | Yes | No | G. A. Silver, J. a. Miller, M. Hybinette, G. Baramidze, und W. S. York, „DeMO: An Ontology for Discrete-event Modeling and Simulation“, Simulation, Bd. 87, Nr. 9, S. 747–773, 2011, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0037549710386843. |
| OSMO | http://www.molmod.info/semantics/osmo.ttl | 2020 | Yes | LGPL 3 | M. T. Horsch, D. Toti, S. Chiacchiera, M. A. Seaton, G. Goldbeck, und I. T. Todorov, „OSMO: Ontology for simulation, modelling, and optimization“, CEUR Workshop Proc., Bd. 2969, 2021. |
| PIMODES | - | - | No | No | L. W. Lacy, „Interchanging Discrete event simulation Process Interaction Models using the Web Ontology Language-OWL“, University of Central Florida, 2006. |
| Ontology for Urban Energy Simulation | https://github.com/Ja98/ues/tree/master | 05/2023 | Yes | No | |
| FMI ontology | https://github.com/UdSAES/fmi2rdf | 02/2022 | Yes | MIT | M. Stüber and G. Frey, „Dynamic system models and their simulation in the Semantic Web“, Semantic Web, Bd. 1, S. 1–36, 2023, doi: https://doi.org/10.3233/sw-233359. |
| SMS ontology | https://github.com/UdSAES/sms-ontology | 09/2022 | Yes | MIT | M. Stüber and G. Frey, „Dynamic system models and their simulation in the Semantic Web“, Semantic Web, Bd. 1, S. 1–36, 2023, doi: https://doi.org/10.3233/sw-233359. |
| SimWis | - | ? | No | No | J. Stolipin and S. Wenzel, „Ontologiebasierte Methodik zur Unterstützung der Nachnutzung von Simulationswissen“, at "Simulation in Produktion und Logistik" 2019, Auerbach, 2019. |
| OEO | https://github.com/OpenEnergyPlatform/ontology | 09/2024 | Yes | CC0 1.0 | M. Booshehri et al., „Energy and AI Introducing the Open Energy Ontology : Enhancing data interpretation and interfacing in energy systems analysis“, Energy AI, Bd. 5, Nr. April, S. 100074, 2021, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyai.2021.100074 |
| EnArgus | https://www.enargus.de/ | 2017 | Yes | CC BY-SA 3.0 | L. Oppermann et al., „Finding and analysing energy research funding data: The EnArgus system“, Energy AI, Bd. 5, S. 100070, Sep. 2021, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyai.2021.100070. |
This section summarises the ontology requirements specification document (ORSD) for the simulation scenario ontology, defining its purpose, scope, intended users and uses, as well as the requirements.
The full ORSD document is available here: ORSD_simulation-scenario-ontology.docx.
| Ontology Name | NFDI4Energy Simulation Scenario Ontology |
| Responsible Team | Task Area 5, Measure 5.2 |
| Purpose | This ontology will represent simulation scenarios for distributed (co-)simulation in the energy domain. It should be used to align the scenario definition of different simulation frameworks. |
| Scope | This ontology will focus on scenario definition for mosaik, VILLAS, and DaceDSX. It should also be open for use with other simulation frameworks in the future. |
| Implementation Language | OWL |
| Intended End-Users |
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| Intended Uses |
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- Modularity
- Use Protege and Git
- Use automatic analysis tools (Oops, Foops, Ontoology, Fairchecker, etc.)
- Reuse ontology and mapping with existing ontology
- Should answer CQ (to be defined)
- Should cover use cases (to be defined)
- Should cover chosen co-simulation frameworks as instances
- Should be compatible with the other NFDI4Energy ontologies
- The language has to be English and maybe also German
See competency question Excel sheets.
- A. Terms from Competency Questions
- B. Terms from Answers
- C. Objects
- Schwarz, J. S., Fuentes Grau, L., Liu, N., Pan, Z., Qussous, R., Schmurr, P., Seiwerth, C., Steinert, A., German, R., Hagenmeyer, V., Lehnhoff, S., Monti, A., Nieße, A., & Weidlich, A. (2025). D5.2.1.1 Registry of relevant domain ontologies for co-simulation scenario definition. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14521502.
- Schwarz, J. S., Fuentes Grau, L., Liu, N., Pan, Z., Qussous, R., Schmurr, P., Seiwerth, C., & Steinert, A. (2026). D5.2.2.1 Integrated NFDI4Energy simulation scenario ontology. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19011136
- Schwarz, J. S., Schmurr, P., Seiwerth, C., Pan, Z., & Qussous, R. (2026). Adapted Ontology Development Process: A Co-Simulation Scenario Ontology for Energy Systems. Open Conference Proceedings, 9. https://doi.org/10.52825/ocp.v9i.3313
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