Towards automating the development of federated distributed simulations for modeling sustainable urban infrastructures

Abstract

The study of sustainable urban systems requires analysis of interdependencies and relationships among infrastructures and social processes. Federated simulations using the High Level Architecture is a natural approach to modeling such systems-of-systems. Simulations interoperability requires a common structure and meaning of shared data represented in a Federation Object Model (FOM). Developing the FOM and modifying simulations to comply with the FOM requires a significant amount of time and effort. We describe a system to automate portions of this task. Specifically we present a workflow by which existing simulations can be integrated in a semi-automated process to reduce the manual labor required. We use SysML to describe entities of the federated distributed simulation. These descriptions are used for automatic generation of the FOM and code required for HLA integration. Finally we present a case study applying this methodology to create a federated distributed simulation to study sustainable urban growth.