A framework for building and simulating qualitative models of compartmental systems

This paper describes a framework, called QCMF (Qualitative Compartmental Modeling Framework), which assists the user in formulating models of a pathophysiological system and in analyzing their behaviors through the simulation of the effects of a variety of pathogenetic mechanisms and therapeutical treatments. QCMF has adopted the compartmental theory as modeling ontology: a system is represented as a finite set of interacting compartments. The user enters, through an iconic language and menus, the compartmental structure of a pathophysiological system and the definition of the kinds of functional relationships describing the interactions between compartments. Then, QCMF automatically generates a behavior model of the system. Such a model consists of a set of ordinary differential equations, which are qualitatively expressed, and is directly coded into the language which is interpreted by the simulation algorithm. The system behavior can be obtained by simulating the model starting from an initial state which describes the perturbations acting on the system. The code defining the initial state is automatically built by QCMF as well. Finally, explanations of the predicted behavior are also automatically generated.