An Ontology for Designing Models of Epidemics

Models of epidemics allow decision makers to explore the consequences of different interventions. The Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) project has been collecting studies, models, data supporting the models, and publications providing historical evidence about epidemics.An ontology has been developed for MIDAS to support the collection, documentation, and dissemination of models. It uses relations to link taxonomies (including a subset of the infectious disease ontology) that define the scope of its models and supporting documentation.The ontology is used to aid in the navigation process that is part of the user interface for identifying which studies and publications are available in the MIDAS repository (MREP) that are consistent with the many parameters associated with a particular study.