Adelinde Uhrmacher, Peter Frazier, Reiner Hähnle, Franziska Klügl, Fabian Lorig, Bertram Ludäscher, Laura Nenzi, Cristina Ruiz-Martin, Bernhard Rumpe, Claudia Szabo, Gabriel A. Wainer, Pia Wilsdorf

Simulation has become, in many application areas, a sine-qua-non. Most recently, COVID-19 has underlined the importance of simulation studies but also limitations in current practices and methods. We identify four goals of methodological work for addressing these limitations. The first is to provide better support for capturing, representing, and evaluating the context of simulation studies, including research questions, assumptions, requirements, and activities that contributed to a simulation study and the generated artifacts, and how this contribution took place. In addition, the composition of simulation models and other products of simulation studies needs to be supported beyond syntactical coherence, including aspects of semantics and purpose, enabling their effective reuse. A higher degree of automating simulation studies will contribute to more systematic, standardized, qualitative simulation studies and their efficiency. Finally, it is essential to invest increased effort into effectively communicating results and the involved processes of simulation studies to enable their use in research and for decision-making. These goals are not pursued independently of each other, but they will benefit from and sometimes even rely on advances in each subfield. In the present paper, we explore the basis and interdependencies evident in current research and practice and delineate future research directions based on these considerations.