Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1. Relationship between real and abstract (modeling) world.
and van Asselt (2001) defi ned IM as the process of structuring and sharing
new knowledge that emerges from the interrelation of different constituent
models in complex socio-economic-environmental scenarios. One of the
common objectives in IM is to support simulation, anticipating potential
impacts, policy and the decision-making processes (McIntosh et al. 2008). It
is widely assumed that an individual model cannot be suffi cient to handle
with the complexity and the large quantity of parameters and variables
needed in real-life, multi-dimensional scenarios.
In geosciences and environmental fi elds, IM is widely recognized as a
proven mechanism to explore a given environmental problem or scenario,
i.e., the combination of models will eventually depend on the environmental
phenomenon being investigated (Parker et al. 2002; Jakeman and Letcher
2003). For example, integrated models for simulating crop growth and
predicting watershed runoff will certainly rely on the combination of distinct
constituent models. So, environmentalists and modelers demand novel
approaches, technologies and tools that allow them to reuse, share and
assemble different models together to address similar environmental issues
(Voinov and Shugart 2013; Laniak et al. 2013b). In this chapter, we examine
distinct strategies for IM, namely, workfl ow systems and geoprocesing
services, identify synergies and their benefi ts, and eventually suggest a
novel and powerful strategy exemplifi ed by the Model Web vision.
The State of the Art
Integrated modeling (IM) has been an active research line during the
last two decades in environmental and geosciences fields. From the
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