Models-talking-to-models for policy

As is well known, research on the challenge of having computers communicate with computers led eventually to the technology of the Internet, and the Internet changed the world. So too it may be possible that attaining the capability of models communicating with models will alter the world of policy making. A methodological problem occurs in this approach when the situation a policy addresses is complicated and requires more than a single model to characterize the situation. Then models need to connect to one another for a full characterization of the situation. A second methodological problem occurs when more than one policy addresses a situation, then also the models underlying each policy must connect to one another - to order to fully understand the interactions between policies. We explore the idea of a `model ontology'. We apply this concept to the issue of communication between models, proposing both a theoretical framework and an initial structuring of knowledge for practice.