Summary
At the moment OpenMI only supports exchange of quantitative data, which is not sufficient for certain environmental domains. Using OpenMI in these domains, or in projects that try to integrate such domains with others, is by consequence difficult. Support for other types of data, in particular qualitative data is needed.
Qualitative data can be ordered (ordinal; e.g. good, better, best) or be without logical ordering (nominal; e.g. types of land use, like agriculture, infrastructure, built-up area. Or types of crops.).
In the agro-environmental domain models are used (e.g. CAPRI, CLUE, EfiScen, Integrator) that for example forecast future land use based on scenarios of policy options. Or that generate rotations (sequences of crops farmers will plant) based on input parameters like soil conditions, technological development, weather conditions, etc.
How to address in Version 1
The proposed solution (as implemented in Alterra's internal OpenMI Java version) is to add a super interface for Data, with IQuality and IQuantity as specialisations. A Quality consists of a number of categories, which can be ordered or not. The definition of the categories and the proper use of them is a responsibility of the models (modeller) not of the OpenMI.
How to address in Version 2
The meta-information about the data (this includes the definition of the categories for qualities, but also of units for quantities) could be stored in an ontology or some other type of glossary making it more flexible to work with and easier for models to use the same definitions.
