Title: A Protocol for the Use of Simulationbased Analysis by Decision Support Systems on the Global Informa
1A Protocol for the Use of Simulation-based
Analysis by Decision Support Systems on the
Global Information Grid
05 April 2006 Wayne Smith, ERDC-CERL
2Problem
- Simulations frequently used to support decisions
- Global Information Grid (GIG) Service Oriented
Architecture supports assembling services - No known protocol for communication between
Decision Support Services (DSS) and Simulation or
Analysis tools - Without a protocol, transfer of criteria
information to a DSS is a manual and error prone
process
3For Example - Installation Analysis Problem
Range Risk and Encroachment Tools
Power Projection Planner
What if? Study options in the Virtual Installation
Installation Planning
Force Protection Tools
4Hypothesis
- There exists a common and abstract control and
data schema that can be used by a DSS and
simulations to communicate, given a suitable
protocol.
5Approach
- Define system endpoints for GIG
- Determine data requirements for common DSS
- Create abstract control and data schema
- Create communication protocol
- Conduct proof-of-concept test of protocol and
schema using a simple DSS with multiple
simulation systems.
6System Endpoints
- Networked
- GIG-like system
- SOAP-based communication
7Abstract Concepts
- Study
- Stakeholder
- Scenario
- Event
- Dataset
- Alternative
- Action
- Plugin
- Goal
- Criterion
- Criterion Value
8Simulation System Meta-data
- Simulations register with DSS using XML
- DSS can call PluginAdapter methods
- PluginAdapter has access to study data
- PluginAdapter formats input for sim, controls
execution, and retrieves results using SOAP XML - DSS compares criteria and alternatives
9PluginAdapter Methods and Protocol
- For each remote plugin and study, DSS uses SOAP
call to - Initialize service to run a job for all
alternatives - Create inputs
- Start jobs
- Get status
- Get results
- Tell service to delete data
- Optional
- Abort all or each job
10Fort Future Deployment Example
11Creating A Study
12Setting The Study Scope
13Setting Goals and Criteria
14Events
15Setting Up Alternatives
16Deployment Alternatives Editor
17Managing Simulations
18Setting Simulation Service Parameters
19Running Simulations
20Viewing Simulation Results
21Protocol Supports Simulation-Specific Results
22Other simulations were tested
23Summary and Future Work
- Proof of concept for a DSS-Simulation protocol
was successful - XML-based registration could be made more dynamic
using WSDL - May be possible to eliminate plugin adapter by
requiring services to provide editing capability - Protocol could be incorporated into MSDL as
meta-control language - With Fort Futures pluggable architecture, new
simulations can be added at any time, and
different simulations can be run within the same
study
24Questions?
- Development is ongoing stop by periodically for
updatesFort Future Home Page
http//ff.cecer.army.mil/ff/home.do - Contacts Dr. Michael Case Michael.P.Case_at_us.arm
y.milWayne Smith Wayne.R.Smith_at_erdc.usace.army.m
il