Towards a semantic framework for co-simulation models interoperability

Complex system are often studied within co-simulation frameworks. Co-simulation needs sub-systems' simulators to be assembled into a system-level view; this work can be done only by a domain expert and requires homogeneous and standard description of interfaces. However, different modeling tools provide different standards, hence interoperability between simulators is not guaranteed. The FMI (Functional Mockup Interface) standard provides a standardized description for models' interfaces, allowing low-level interoperability, but still requiring an expert to manually adjust the co-simulation topology. In this thesis, the use of ontology-based interfaces for automatically infer compatibility between simulator's ports has been explored, lowering the knowledge required for setting up a co-simulation, and allowing the topology between simulators to be (partially) derived. As proof-of-concept an energy-building use case is provided to present this solution.