Documenting model metadata

[leonardo-frid]

Question from a model user:

I’m just getting back into the State and Transition modeling world after a significant break.  I just did one of Ayn Shlisky’s mini workshops in Corvallis a few weeks ago, where she presented the new ST-Sim and helped a group of us get up to speed on the new software.  I’m excited to dig into ST-Sim further and appreciate the effort you put into developing it.  In some of our projects we are using some of the ILAP models that Miles and his team developed which are very thorough and complex.  As we engage with Foresters and people in the collaboratives, it becomes necessary to explain in broad terms what the model is doing and the logic steps.  What I’m curious about is how some of your customers and partners are capturing the logic and assumptions for different states and transitions in their models.  For example, when there is a Fire Return Interval of 12 years, how are people documenting that and where they got that source to put that value in the model?  The ability to share and modify the models is great, but the underlying logic is just as important and the numbers.  I’m trying to understand the best way to document model metadata specific to the different states and transitions.  I was hoping that you’ve had a some good experience with this and may have a good recommendation on a best practices for capturing this info.

 

[leonardo-frid]

There are a number of different approaches that users have taken to document model metadata and there are some good examples in the model publications posted here:

http://wiki.pathmodel.com/index.php?title=Publications

 

 

Perhaps the project with the most thorough metadata documentation approach was the LANDFIRE vegetation dynamics models.  

See:  http://www.landfire.gov/downloadfile.php?file=UsingBpSDescrips_2009_03_25.pdf

 

 

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