Towards an Ontology for Mathematical Modeling with Application to Epidemiology

Background and purpose As many other fields of science or perhaps more than them Mathematics needs abstract models to represent its core concepts and how they are related. Being abstract by nature, one could unadvisedly suppose that the task of building those conceptual models would be easier than the average case, which is not necessarily true. Mathematical modeling is a field of applied mathematics which form deep inroads into other disciplines. The availability of a formal ontology and derived benefits, such as the possibility of conducting automated reasoning about the ntological classes of the domains, greatly reduce the barrier of entry in the field for non-experts, while helping the establishment of a more precise and controlled vocabulary among the expert domains involved in mathematical modeling.