fishwick@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU (Paul Fishwick) (06/09/89)
----------------------CIS COLLOQUIUM SERIES-----------------------------
-----------Department of Computer and Information Sciences--------------
----------------------University of Florida-----------------------------
-------------------------Gainesville, FL--------------------------------
The EcoLogic System:
A Simulation System using Logic Programming
Ms. Mandy Haggith
Department of Computer Science
Edinburgh University
Scotland
Time: 10:00PM - 11:30PM
Date: Tuesday, June 13th
Place: Large Conference Room, Room 305 Building CSE
ABSTRACT
Many ecologists wish to test out hypotheses about a particular
ecological system by constructing and manipulating a mathematical
model of that system. A convenient and powerful way of doing this is
to write and run a simulation program implementing the appropriate
mathematical model. Unfortunately many ecologists do not have, and do
not want to learn, the various programming techniques necessary to
construct simulation programs themselves. A valuable tool for such
ecologists, therefore, would be a computer system which would help
them to describe their ecological systems in ecological terminology,
and would use this information to construct appropriate simulation
programs. The aim of the ECO project is to build such a tool. A
prototype system meeting these requirements, called EcoLogic
(EL), has been constructed and is the subject of several ECO papers.
My talk will be an overview of current work on the ECO project,
motivated and illustrated by an example ecological model of the seal
populations in the North Sea, which are suffering a viral epidemic.
I shall outline how EL works, and indicate some of its major
weaknesses. These include its inability to cope with incomplete
ecological descriptions, problems with its user-interface,
and the limit to the range of ecological models which it can construct.
My research task is to correct these weaknesses, so the majority of the
talk will be a discussion of the solutions with which I am experimenting.