Term

Definition

SimVariable

Any variable holding a simulation parameter, state or rate. It is generally limited to BOOLEAN, DOUBLE, DOUBLEARRAY, INT, INTARRAY, CHAR, CHARARRAY, DATE types; and has ancillary attributes such as description, minimum, maximum and default values, units, etc.

SimComponent

Interchangeable software units containing the mathematical formulation about the functioning of one or more processes and can be considered sub-models

GroupComponent

A fixed set of SimComponents that represents a predefined model structure (e.g., a whole crop model)

ModelSolution

An XML file where all the linkages and rules for data exchange and processing are explicitly made between input, output, and SimComponents

SimulationProject

An XML file with controlling parameters for an encapsulated ModelSolution

SimulationExperiment

Combination of ModelSolution, SimulationProject and all data files

Transformers

A special feature of SIMPLACE that can be invoked in a ModelSolution for data aggregation and harmonization purposes

Interface

In a ModelSolution, the interfaces are explicit links to external input/output data. Specifies the data format (CSV, XML, etc.)

Resource

Is an internal dataset, imported from the interface. Specifies the data structure. Provides links to external data or is processed by a Transformer 

SimulationGenerator

A feature of ProjectController that allows for multiple replications of a simulation altering one or various parameters’ values of a ModelSolution within a user-defined range

SimulationSelector

A feature of ProjectController that allows for filtering simulations outputs based on predefined criteria, typically used for model calibrations

SimulationIterators

A feature of ProjectController that make it possible to repeatedly shrink the values spaces of variables and iterate calibration processes

VarMap

The main data container of SimVariables for the simulation instance which is updated for each daily timestep.

ProjectController

The feature handling the initialization and end of the core application including the SimulationGenerator and SimulationSelector features

CropManager

Graphical User Interface (GUI) to assist the creation of ModelSolutions and visualization of model structure and output analysis