MathModDB

Proper documentation and storage of research data, adhering to FAIR principles, are crucial for reproducibility and scientific integrity. Applied mathematics, producing diverse numerical and symbolic data, heavily relies on models that must be well-documented for replication and future use. Here, we present MathModDB, an ontology for mathematical models, along with a knowledge graph containing over 1500 elements. The work is conducted within the NFDI project entitled Mathematical Research Data Initiative (MaRDI).

Ontology

MathModDB is a database of mathematical models developed by MaRDI's Task Area 4 as an ontology. MathModDB defines a data model with classes, object properties/relations, data and annotation properties as an ontology. The ontology consists of the classes Mathematical Model, Mathematical Expression, Computational Task, Quantity, Quantity Kind, Academic Discipline, Research Problem and Scholarly Article. The structure of the ontology is displayed in the image below:

Structure of the MathModDB ontology

Knowledge Graph

The ontology is populated with individuals/data from various fields of applied mathematics, making it a knowledge graph. Next, we show the total number of individuals per class and a detailed list of the individuals, when you click on the respective total number of individuals.

Academic Disciplines: 42

Research Problems: 87

Mathematical Models: 180

Computational Tasks: 116

Mathematical Expressions: 594

Quantities: 614

Quantity Kinds: 66

Total number of individuals: 1699

Total number of statements: 19425

Featured research problems

• Electric Discharges: studying the production of non-thermal (cold) plasma in gases. Cooperation within NFDI4BioImage (Markus Becker from INP Greifswald)
• Free Flow Coupled to Porous Media Flow: studying free flow coupled to the flow in porous media, of importance in environmental science. Cooperation with Cedric Riethmüller from University of Stuttgart(IANS/SimTech)
• Gravitational Effects on Fruit: studying how fruits are falling from trees, which inspired Newton's law of gravitation. A pedagogical example
• Nonadiabatic Molecular Dynamics: molecular dynamics simulations including electronically nonadiabatic transitions. Cooperation planned within NFDI4Chem (Mario Wolter and Christoph Jacob from Technical University Braunschweig)
• Opinion Dynamics: studying opinion dynamics under the impact of influencers and media. Cooperation with Luzie Helfmann from Zuse Institute Berlin
• Plate With a Hole: a prototypical research problem from computational mechanics. Cooperation within NFDI4Ing (Jörg Unger and Sjard Rosenbusch from Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung)
• Romanization Spreading in Northern Tunesia: studying how the roman culture spreads across Northern Tunesia. Cooperation with Margarita Kostré from Zuse Institute Berlin
• Spin Qbit Shuttling: novel functional elements in modular architectures of semiconductor quantum processors. Cooperation with Markus Kantner at the Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics
• Uni Uni Reaction: studying enzymatic reactions involving a single reactant and a single product using basic Enzyme Kinetic Models.

More use cases coming soon ...

Example SPARQL Queries

Relations connecting items

• Find all used properties sorted by usage frequency
• Find all used qualifiers sorted by usage frequency
• Find all roles of quantities sorted by usage frequency
• Find all roles of equations sorted by usage frequency
• Find all items with literature references

Subclass instances

• Find all dimensionless items
• Find all stochastic items
• Find all discrete-time expressions
• Find all discrete-space expressions
• Find all constant quantities

External links

• Find all items with Wikidata QID
• Find all items with Wikipedia link
• Find all items with related URLs
• Find all items with QUDT quantity kind ID
• Find all items named after a person (connection to FactGrid)

Recent Changes

• Academic Disciplines
• Research Problems
• Mathematical Models
• Computational Tasks
• Mathematical Expressions
• Quantities & Quantity Kinds
• All of the above

Last six weeks only, limited to 1000 changes

Roadmap

• MathModDB: list of issues (Gitlab)
• MaRDI Portal: list of issues (Github)

Publications

2025

Schembera, B., Wübbeling, F., Shehu, A., Biedinger, C., Fiedler, J., Reidelbach, M., Schmidt, B., Ferrer, E., & Koprucki, T. (2025, August 4). FAIR Representation of Mathematical Research Data: MathModDB and MathAlgoDB as Knowledge Graphs for Mathematical Models and Numerical Algorithms. 2nd Conference on Research Data Infrastructure (CoRDI), Aachen, Germany. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.16735911

Schembera, Björn, Frank Wübbeling, Hendrik Kleikamp, Burkhard Schmidt, Aurela Shehu, Marco Reidelbach, Christine Biedinger et al. "Towards a Knowledge Graph for Models and Algorithms in Applied Mathematics." In: Sfakakis, M., Garoufallou, E., Damigos, M., Salaba, A., Papatheodorou, C. (eds) Metadata and Semantic Research (MTSR 2024). Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 2331. Springer, Cham. DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-81974-2_8

2024

Schembera, B., Wübbeling, F., Kleikamp, H., Biedinger, C., Fiedler, J., Reidelbach, M., Shehu, A., Schmidt, B., Koprucki, T., Iglezakis, D. and Göddeke, D., 2023. Ontologies for Models and Algorithms in Applied Mathematics and Related Disciplines. In: Garoufallou, E. and Sartori, F. (eds) Metadata and Semantic Research (MTSR 2023). Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 2048. Springer, Cham. DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-65990-4_14

2023

Schembera, B., Riethmüller, C. and Göddeke, D., Enabling FAIR Data in Computational Science, Engineering and Mathematics through Knowledge Graphs.

Schembera, B., Wübbeling, F., Koprucki, T., Biedinger, C., Reidelbach, M., Schmidt, B., Göddeke, D. and Fiedler, J., 2023, September. Building Ontologies and Knowledge Graphs for Mathematics and its Applications. In Proceedings of the Conference on Research Data Infrastructure (Vol. 1). DOI:10.52825/cordi.v1i.255