Epidemiological modeling for infectious disease is useful for disease management and routine implementation needs to be facilitated through better description of models in an operational context. A standardized model characterization process that allows selection or making manual comparisons of available models and their results is currently lacking. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has developed a comprehensive framework that can be used to characterize an infectious disease model in an operational context. We offer this framework and an associated database to stakeholders of the infectious disease modeling field as a tool for standardizing model
description and facilitating the use of epidemiological models. Such a framework could help the understanding of diverse models by various stakeholders with different preconceptions, backgrounds, expertise, and needs, and can foster greater use of epidemiological models as tools in infectious disease surveillance.

Objectives
1. To develop a comprehensive model characterization framework to describe epidemiological models in an operational context.
2. To apply the framework to characterize “operational” models for specific infectious diseases and provide a web-based directory, the biosurveillance analytics resource directory (BARD) to the global infectious disease surveillance community.