Building Models in Pairs for Cross‐Verification Using SDL and DEVS

Abstract The objective of the paper is to present a methodology that can be used to translate a model from one formalism to another allowing model reuse and cross‐verification. With the use of formal languages, the model specifications can be expressed in a rigorous and univocal way, and the model can be validated against the specifications or conceptual model. Expressing the same model in different formal languages opens the conceptual model validation to a varied number of specialists. Also, in the context of modeling a new system, where there is no data to perform validation against a real system, having pairs of models can be used to perform cross‐model verification to ensure that the model specifications or conceptual models are correctly implemented by comparing the results produced by both models. Specifically, a method is presented to translate a model conceptualized on specification and description language (SDL) to discrete event system specification (DEVS). The transformation mechanism between SDL and DEVS formalisms is described. The methodology is exemplified with a disease spread model for COVID‐19, and it is shown how the results obtained by the two models can be used for cross‐verification.