Margevicius, K. J.,Generous, N.,Abeyta, E.,Althouse, B.,Burkom, H.,Castro, L.,Daughton, A.,Del Valle, S. Y.,Fairchild, G.,Hyman, J. M.,Kiang, R.,Morse, A. P.,Pancerella, C. M.,Pullum, L.,Ramanathan, A.,Schlegelmilch, J.,Scott, A.,Taylor-McCabe, K. J.,Vespignani, A.,Deshpande, A.

Epidemiological modeling for infectious disease is important for disease management and its 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. A key need is a universal framework to facilitate model description and understanding of its features. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has developed a comprehensive framework that can be used to characterize an infectious disease model in an operational context. The framework was developed through a consensus among a panel of subject matter experts. In this paper, we describe the framework, its application to model characterization, and the development of the Biosurveillance Analytics Resource Directory (BARD; http://brd.bsvgateway.org/brd/), to facilitate the rapid selection of operational models for specific infectious/communicable diseases. We offer this framework and associated database to stakeholders of the infectious disease modeling field as a tool for standardizing model description and facilitating the use of epidemiological models.