Simulation interoperability

Typically, paper-based semi-structured documents are used to communicate technical requirements in the industry. One approach to improving the efficiency and flexibility of searching and manipulating these documents is to obtain them in electronic form, and then make explicit the technical content in a form amenable to pattern matching and symbol manipulation. This paper explores the role of XML Technology for these purposes: the use of XML language to make explicit the content of a document in a standard fashion, and the use of XSLT to manipulate the content and mediate between applications that need this content. In order to recognize and appreciate the practical difficulties, a problem in the realm of Content Extraction from Materials and Processing Specification is studied and solved using the available tools supporting the XML Technology. The Case Study provides a realistic assessment of the benefits and the limitations of XML Technology for document handling from the perspective of a developer. It also illustrates non-trivial uses of XSLT constructs.

The Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) Space Reference Federation Object Model (SpaceFOM) version 1.0 is nearing completion. Earlier papers have described the use of the High Level Architecture (HLA) in Space simulation as well as technical aspects of the SpaceFOM. This paper takes a look at different SpaceFOM tools and how they were used during the development and testing of the standard. The first organizations to develop SpaceFOM-compliant federates for SpaceFOM development and testing were NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC), the University of Calabria (UNICAL), and Pitch Technologies. JSC is one of NASA’s lead centers for human space flight. Much of the core distributed simulation technology development, specifically associated with the SpaceFOM, is done by the NASA Exploration Systems Simulations (NExSyS) team. One of NASA’s principal simulation development tools is the Trick Simulation Environment. NASA’s NExSyS team has been modifying and using Trick and...

Open Source Software (OSS) is often developed in a public collaborative manner. Online OSS repositories such as GitHub, Google Code and SourceForge support collaborative OSS development by offering services such as subversion management, bug tracking and others. However, OSS mostly favors end-users who are programmers or have some prerequisite programming skills. The normally short README description file provided by the OSS developers does not contain enough information to help the novice end-users who intend to use the software in terms of installation and usage. Also, despite being equipped with social coding feature to support distributed multi-developer work environment, most OSS repositories provide only a storage space for the OSS files and this limits end-users just to their bugs/review comments on a different platform and naturally, people would also like to be key stakeholders like changing the functionality and accessibility of software they could use. Some online OSS repositories do not make provision for users to frequently communicate with the developers of the OSS to discuss about the published content on the repository. In this paper, we propose a social framework for OSS development to address the aforementioned issues. The framework is aimed to allow: (1) knowing the degree of matching between the sought user's requirements and the available OSS by presenting the enduser with the business domain model of a candidate OSS associated to its textual requirements description and (2) a lifetime communication between the users and OSS developers and even inviting other developers out of the OSS development team if needed.

As concurrent design has changed the landscape of design project management, knowledge management method is introduced in this field to enhance learning in an organization. However, new challenges arise for knowledge management in concurrent design projects: knowledge has changed from domain expert knowledge to organizational cooperative knowledge; simple knowledge conceptualization is not sufficient to represent interactions between concepts. Therefore, aims for these challenges, a new cooperative knowledge discovery method based on semantic networks by classification on concept interactions is proposed. 2 RESEARCH BACKGROUND First of all, we are going to introduce the concept cooperative knowledge. Secondly, the concept cooperative knowledge will be put into design project field to outline the characteristics of design project knowledge. Thirdly, the concept project memory will be proposed to represent the knowledge in design projects. 2.1 Cooperative Knowledge Cooperative knowledge is defined as knowledge

The development of complex autonomous robotic systems is critical for building future planetary exploration missions at the European Space Agency (ESA). In this context, ESA started the Harwell Robotics and Autonomy Facility (HRAF) project, whose main objective is to provide an effective support for the integration, validation and verification of autonomy components. The HRAF architecture is founded on both HLA (High Level Architecture) as a distributed simulation middleware, and the Distributed Simulation Engineering and Execution Process (DSEEP) as the adopted reference process for building HLA-based simulations. The current Pilot 3 phase of the HRAF development plan deals with the development and validation of a model-driven framework for supporting the semi-automated generation of HLA-based simulations. In this respect, this paper illustrates how model-driven approaches and technologies have been investigated and applied to achieve the HRAF Pilot 3 goals, along with the related ...

Large-scale adaptive educational software requires advanced technological infrastructures in order to support various cooperative educational organizations. This paper proposes a framework for overcoming the difficulties that arise due to the distribution and heterogeneity of current collaborative educational technologies. The proposed framework is based on XML it is of distributive and cooperative nature since it is characterized by the following: • Each educational organization may plan its development to meet its own needs. • It is possible for each organization to concurrently reuse the software that has already been developed by any other organiza tion, • Each organization can combine its own software production, with the production of other cooperative organizations, in various ways.

This paper describes models, methods and software tool for testability analysis of aviation systems. It comprises analytical and programing aspects of calculations of main testability, reliability and availability indices. It presents general description of the software, XML schema of input data and technique of their mapping to the database structure. The procedure for generating the initial data for testability analysis based on the line replaceable units failure modes report is described. Fault tree model for analysis of the built-in test conformity is suggested. Markov models have been created for analyzing reliability and availability, taking into account the features of the built-in test and the specifics of the aircraft operation. An approach to the construction of trends in the operative availability of aviation systems in the inter-maintenance interval is proposed.

In the Space domain the High Level Architecture (HLA) is one of the reference standard for Distributed Simulation. However, for the different organization involved in the Space domain (e.g. NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, and JAXA) and their industrial partners, it is difficult to implement HLA simulators (called Federates) able to interact and interoperate in the context of a distributed HLA simulation (called Federation). The lack of a common FOM (Federation Object Model) for the Space domain is one of the main reasons that precludes a-priori interoperability between heterogeneous federates. To fill this lack a Product Development Group (PDG) has been recently activated in the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) with the aim to provide a Space Reference FOM (SRFOM) for international collaboration on Space systems simulations. Members of the PDG come from several countries and contribute experiences from projects within NASA, ESA and other organizations. Participants represent government, academia and industry. The paper presents an overview of the ongoing Space Reference FOM standardization initiative by focusing on the solution provided for managing the execution of an SRFOMbased Federation.

The Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) Space Reference Federation Object Model (SpaceFOM) version 1.0 is nearing completion. Earlier papers have described the use of the High Level Architecture (HLA) in Space simulation as well as technical aspects of the SpaceFOM. This paper takes a look at different SpaceFOM tools and how they were used during the development and testing of the standard. The first organizations to develop SpaceFOM-compliant federates for SpaceFOM development and testing were NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC), the University of Calabria (UNICAL), and Pitch Technologies. JSC is one of NASA's lead centers for human space flight. Much of the core distributed simulation technology development, specifically associated with the SpaceFOM, is done by the NASA Exploration Systems Simulations (NExSyS) team. One of NASA's principal simulation development tools is the Trick Simulation Environment. NASA's NExSyS team has been modifying and using Trick and TrickHLA to help develop and test the SpaceFOM. The System Modeling And Simulation Hub Laboratory (SMASH-Lab) at UNICAL has developed the Simulation Exploration Experience (SEE) HLA Starter kit, that has been used by most SEE teams involved in the distributed simulation of a Moon base. It is particularly useful for the development of federates that are compatible with the SpaceFOM. The HLA Starter Kit is a Java based tool that provides a well-structured framework to simplify the formulation, generation, and execution of SpaceFOM-compliant federates. Pitch Technologies, a company specializing in distributed simulation, is utilizing a number of their existing HLA tools to support development and testing of the SpaceFOM. In addition to the existing tools, Pitch has developed a few SpaceFOM specific federates: Space Master for managing the initialization, execution and pacing of any SpaceFOM federation; EarthEnvironment, a simple Root Reference Publisher; and Space Monitor, a graphical tool for monitoring reference frames and physical entities. Early testing of the SpaceFOM was carried out in the SEE university outreach program, initiated in SISO. Students were given a subset of the FOM, that was later extended. Sample federates were developed and frameworks were developed or adapted to the early FOM versions. As drafts of the standard matured, testing was performed using federates from government, industry, and academia. By mixing federates developed by different teams the standard could be tested with respect to functional correctness, robustness and clarity. These frameworks and federates have been useful when testing and verifying the design of the standard. In addition to this, they have since formed a starting point for developing SpaceFOM-compliant federations in several projects, for example for NASA, ESA as well as SEE.

The IEEE 1516-2010-Standard for Modeling and Simulation High Level Architecture (HLA) range of standards are widely used for distributed simulation, interoperability, reusability and the modeling of large-scale systems in many application domains. However, the development of distributed simulations based on the HLA standards remains a challenging task that requires a considerable effort in terms of time, cost and expertise. The HLA Development Kit software Framework (DKF) is a software framework that aims to facilitate the development of HLA-based distributed simulations. This tutorial presents an overview of the DKF and a methodology for its use. Examples of the DKF in action are given from the Simulation Exploration Experience (SEE), a worldwide project led by NASA that annually gives the opportunity to build collaboratively a distributed simulation of a Moonbase.

In the Space domain the High Level Architecture (HLA) is one of the reference standard for Distributed Simulation. However, for the different organization involved in the Space domain (e.g. NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, and JAXA) and their industrial partners, it is difficult to implement HLA simulators (called Federates) able to interact and interoperate in the context of a distributed HLA simulation (called Federation). The lack of a common FOM (Federation Object Model) for the Space domain is one of the main reasons that precludes a-priori interoperability between heterogeneous federates. To fill this lack a Product Development Group (PDG) has been recently activated in the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) with the aim to provide a Space Reference FOM (SRFOM) for international collaboration on Space systems simulations. Members of the PDG come from several countries and contribute experiences from projects within NASA, ESA and other organizations. Participants represent government, academia and industry. The paper presents an overview of the ongoing Space Reference FOM standardization initiative by focusing on the solution provided for managing the execution of an SRFOMbased Federation.

Due to the increasing complexity of systems in the space domain the management of requirements, emergent behaviors and risks of integrations is becoming a challenging task. Modeling and Simulation (M&S) methods can be usefully exploited to address this complexity and perform a more detailed analysis on the system. In this domain, the IEEE 1516.2010-HLA is one of the well-established standards for Distributed Simulation. Unfortunately, for the different organizations, it is not trivial to implement HLA simulators able to interact with each other. To deal with this aspect and enabling a-priori interoperability between HLA simulators, a Product Development Group (PDG) has been activated to provide a Space Reference FOM (SRFOM) for international collaboration on space systems simulations. This paper presents the most interesting and relevant experiences from the exploitation of the SRFOM standard by the NASA Exploration Systems Simulations team, Pitch Technologies, and the SMASH-Lab of the University of Calabria.

The IEEE 1516-2010-High Level Architecture (HLA) for distributed simulation is growing in a variety of application domains due to its capabilities to enable the interoperability and reusability of distributed simulation components. However, the development of simulation models based on the HLA standard remains a challenging task that requires a considerable effort in terms of both time and cost. This paper provides an introduction tutorial on developing HLA-based simulations using the HLA Development Kit (DKF) framework. The tutorial guides developers through the necessary steps for defining and creating an HLA-based simulation, and explains how the HLA elements can be easily managed by using the DKF's services. The effectiveness of the DKF is proven by its concrete exploitation in the context of the Simulation Exploration Experience (SEE), a project led by NASA and which involves as partners several U.S. and European Institutions.

Modern Complex Engineered Systems (CES) are the result of the ever-growing advances in science and technology that involve new paradigms, architectures and functionalities derived from multiple domains. Due to the nature of CES, which are composed of many heterogeneous components often designed and manufactured by organizations belonging to different engineering domains, is difficult to handle their whole lifecycle through classical Modeling and Simulation (M&S) techniques. To manage this complexity, it is necessary the definition of more suitable techniques capable of addressing, in an integrated way, the issues of reusability, interoperability and distribution of CES simulation models. In this context, great benefits may come from the joint exploitation of Distributed Simulation (DS) and Co-Simulation approaches. To concretely explore this opportunity, this article proposes a solution that relies on the integration of the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) and the IEEE 1516-High Level Architecture (HLA) standard. To prove the feasibility and validity of the defined solution, a case study concerning a scenario in the context of the Simulation Exploration Experience (SEE) international project, led by NASA, is also presented.

To understand, predict and optimize the behavior of systems, several M&S techniques are emerging. A wellknown and mature standard is the IEEE 1516-2010-High Level Architecture (HLA) that is a generalpurpose architecture to support the reuse and interoperability of distributed simulation components. In this context, the paper presents a concrete experience in using the HLA standard in the context of an international project, the Simulation Exploration Experience (SEE), organized by the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO), in collaboration with NASA and other industrial partners, and involving several university teams in the distributed simulation of a Moon base.

Distributed and Real-Time Simulation plays a keyrole in the Space domain being exploited for missions and systems analysis and engineering as well as for crew training and operational support. One of the most popular standards is the 1516-2010 IEEE Standard for Modeling and Simulation (M&S) High Level Architecture (HLA). HLA supports the implementation of distributed simulations (called Federations) in which a set of simulation entities (called Federates) can interact using a Run-Time Infrastructure (RTI). In a given Federation, a Federate can publish and/or subscribes objects and interactions on the RTI only in accordance with their structures as defined in a FOM (Federation Object Model). Currently, the Space domain is characterized by a set of incompatible FOMs that, although meet the specific needs of different organizations and projects, increases the long-term cost for interoperability. In this context, the availability of a reference FOM for the Space domain will enable the development of interoperable HLA-based simulators for related joint projects and collaborations among worldwide organizations involved in the Space domain (e.g. NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, and JAXA). The paper presents a first set of results achieved by a SISO standardization effort that aims at providing a Space Reference FOM for international collaboration on Space systems simulations.

Traffic congestion affects not only the economic activity of cities but is also responsible for air quality and global warming problems. The employment of electric buses in metropolitan transportation as an alternative to internal combustion engine buses appears to be a promising ecosustainable solution. However, an important aspect in evaluating the performance and adequateness of such vehicles is the fact they are immersed in an urban context. This work follows a HLA-based distributed architecture for electric bus powertrain simulation within a realistic urban mobility environment. In that sense, it discusses on coupling the SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility) microscopic traffic simulator with a model of an electric bus powertrain subsystem designed in the MatLab/Simulink environment. Both the electric bus traction subsystems and the integration have been validated using field test experimental data. The proposed simulation framework is multi-faceted. As a matter of fact it can be used, not only as electric vehicle evaluation tool under different dynamics of traffic conditions and driving behavior, but also as a planner for charging strategies and optimizations.

This chapter describes a number of key techniques that are used to implement a flexible agent-based modeling (ABM) framework entirely on the GPU in CUDA. Performance rates equaling or bettering that of high-performance computing (HPC) clusters can easily be achieved, with obvious cost-toperformance benefits. Massive population sizes can be simulated, far exceeding those that can be computed (in reasonable time constraints) within traditional ABM toolkits. The use of data parallel methods ensures that the techniques used within this chapter are applicable to emerging multicore and data parallel architectures that will continue to increase their level of parallelism to improve performance. The concept of a flexible architecture is built around the use of a neutral modeling language (XML) for agents. The technique of template-driven dynamic code generation specifically using XML template processing is also general enough to be effective in other domains seeking to solve the issue of portability and abstraction of modeling logic from simulation code.

Deployment of Smart Cards for Identity Verification requires collection of credentials and provisioning of credentials from and to heterogeneous and sometimes legacy systems. To facilitate this process, a centralized identity store called Identity Management System (IDMS) is often used. To protect the integrity, confidentiality and privacy of the credential data that is collected, stored and disseminated through IDMS, a sophisticated set of policies governing data flows, processing and distribution are required. In this paper, we present a policy specification and enforcement framework using XML, XML Schemas and XSLT that was developed for secure management of the infrastructure system used for a large scale smart ID card deployment.

Deployment of smart cards as identity tokens (Smart ID Cards) requires the support of an enterprise system called Identity Management System (IDMS) for collection, storage, processing and distribution of personal identity credentials. Secure configuration of IDMS for Smart ID Card deployment (IDMS-SCD) requires an access specification and validation framework that is platformneutral and derives the security requirements based on detailed business processes analysis and application of robust security principles. In this paper, we describe the development and implementation of such a framework. The access and policy specifications in this framework are represented using XML Schema and XML and the validation of the access specification for conformance to policies is performed using XSLT.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the world's largest distributed computing system that performs the key function of translating user-friendly domain names to IP addresses through a process called name resolution. After looking at the protection measures for securing the DNS transactions, we discover that the trust in the name resolution process ultimately depends upon the integrity of the data repository that authoritative name servers of DNS use. This data repository is called a zone file. Hence we analyze in detail the data content relationships in a zone file that have security impacts. We then develop a taxonomy and associated population of constraints. We also have developed a platform-independent framework using XML, XML Schema and XSLT for encoding those constraints and verifying them against the XML encoded zone file data to detect integrity violations.

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XML is rapidly becoming one of the most widely adopted technologies for information exchange and representation. As the use of XML becomes more widespread, we foresee the development of active XML rules, i.e., rules explicitly designed for the management of XML information. In particular, we argue that active rules for XML offer a natural paradigm for the rapid development of innovative e-services. In the paper, we show how active rules can be specified in the context of XSLT, a pattern-based language for publishing XML documents (promoted by the W3C) which is receiving strong commercial support, and Lorel, a query language for XML documents that is quite popular in the research world. We demonstrate, through simple examples of active rules for XSLT and Lorel, that active rules can be effective for the implementation of e-commerce services. We also discuss the various issues that need to be considered in adapting the notion of relational triggers to the XML context.

Open Source Software (OSS) is often developed in a public collaborative manner. Online OSS repositories such as GitHub, Google Code and SourceForge support collaborative OSS development by offering services such as subversion management, bug tracking and others. However, OSS mostly favors end-users who are programmers or have some prerequisite programming skills. The normally short README description file provided by the OSS developers does not contain enough information to help the novice end-users who intend to use the software in terms of installation and usage. Also, despite being equipped with social coding feature to support distributed multi-developer work environment, most OSS repositories provide only a storage space for the OSS files and this limits end-users just to their bugs/review comments on a different platform and naturally, people would also like to be key stakeholders like changing the functionality and accessibility of software they could use. Some online OSS repositories do not make provision for users to frequently communicate with the developers of the OSS to discuss about the published content on the repository. In this paper, we propose a social framework for OSS development to address the aforementioned issues. The framework is aimed to allow: (1) knowing the degree of matching between the sought user's requirements and the available OSS by presenting the enduser with the business domain model of a candidate OSS associated to its textual requirements description and (2) a lifetime communication between the users and OSS developers and even inviting other developers out of the OSS development team if needed.

Last year, the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) inaugurated the now annual High Level Architecture (HLA) Smackdown at the Spring Simulation Interoperability Workshop (SIW). A primary objective of the Smackdown event is to provide college students with hands-on experience in the High Level Architecture (HLA). The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAHuntsville) fielded teams in 2011 and 2012. Both the 2011 and 2012 smackdown scenarios were a lunar resupply mission. The 2012 UAHuntsville fielded four federates: a communications network Federate called Lunar Communications and Navigation Satellite Service (LCANServ) for sending and receiving messages, a Lunar Satellite Constellation (LCANSat) to put in place radios needed by the communications network for Line-Of-Sight communication calculations, and 3D graphical displays of the orbiting satellites and a 3D visualization of the lunar surface activities. This paper concentrates on the first two federates by describing the functions, algorithms, the modular FOM, experiences, lessons learned and recommendations for future Smackdown events.

Open Source Software (OSS) is often developed in a public collaborative manner. Online OSS repositories such as GitHub, Google Code and SourceForge support collaborative OSS development by offering services such as subversion management, bug tracking and others. However, OSS mostly favors end-users who are programmers or have some prerequisite programming skills. The normally short README description file provided by the OSS developers does not contain enough information to help the novice end-users who intend to use the software in terms of installation and usage. Also, despite being equipped with social coding feature to support distributed multi-developer work environment, most OSS repositories provide only a storage space for the OSS files and this limits end-users just to their bugs/review comments on a different platform and naturally, people would also like to be key stakeholders like changing the functionality and accessibility of software they could use. Some online OSS repositories do not make provision for users to frequently communicate with the developers of the OSS to discuss about the published content on the repository. In this paper, we propose a social framework for OSS development to address the aforementioned issues. The framework is aimed to allow: (1) knowing the degree of matching between the sought user's requirements and the available OSS by presenting the enduser with the business domain model of a candidate OSS associated to its textual requirements description and (2) a lifetime communication between the users and OSS developers and even inviting other developers out of the OSS development team if needed.

Geospatial data capture and handling of indoor spaces is increasing over the years and has had a varied history of data sources ranging from architectural and building drawings to indoor data acquisition approaches. While these have been more data format and information driven primarily for the physical representation of spaces, it is important to note that many applications look for the semantic information to be made available. This paper proposes a space classification model leading to an ontology for indoor spaces that accounts for both the semantic and geometric characteristics of the spaces. Further, a Space semantic model is defined, based on this ontology, which can then be used appropriately in multiple applications. To demonstrate the utility of the model, we also present an extension to the IndoorGML data standard with a set of proposed classes that can help capture both the syntactic and semantic components of the model. It is expected that these proposed classes can be ...

This paper presents the XML-based formats ALTO, TEI, METS used for Digital Libraries and their interest for data representation in a Document Image Analysis and Recognition (DIAR) process. In the first part we briefly present these formats with focus on their adequacy for structural representation and modeling of DIAR data. The second part shows how these formats can be used in a reverse engineering process. Their implementation as a data representation framework will be shown.

VOEvent [20] defines the content and meaning of a standard information packet for representing, transmitting, publishing and archiving information about a transient celestial event, with the implication that timely follow-up is of interest. The objective is to motivate the observation of targets-of-opportunity, to drive robotic telescopes, to trigger archive searches, and to alert the community. VOEvent is focused on the reporting of photon events, but events mediated by disparate phenomena such as neutrinos, gravitational waves, and solar or atmospheric particle bursts may also be reported. Structured data is used, rather than natural language, so that automated systems can effectively interpret VOEvent packets. Each packet may contain zero or more of the "who, what, where, when & how" of a detected event, but in addition, may contain a hypothesis (a "why") regarding the nature of the underlying physical cause of the event. Status of this Document This is the Proposed Recommendation of VOEvent v2.0. The first release of the near final document was 2011 March 07. This document describes an update to the IVOA VOEvent recommendation for the representation of celestial transient event metadata. It has been developed by the VOEvent Working Group. Changes from v1.1 are described below (in section 1.1). This is an IVOA Proposed Recommendation made available for public review. It is appropriate to reference this document only as a recommended standard that is under review and which may be changed before it is accepted as a full recommendation. The latest version (currently v1.11) of the internationally adopted VOEvent Recommendation (standard) is available from http://ivoa.net/Documents/latest/VOEvent.html. The list of current IVOA Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/. VOEvent is an IVOA standard, which means that it fits into a rich matrix of other IVOA standards: the image below shows where VOEvent fits into the broader IVOA architecture. VOEvents inherit much of the structure and semantics of VOTable, including the UCD scheme for semantics of quantities. VOEvent takes space-time coordinates from the STC, and it uses the URI semantics of the IVOA Vocabulary effort. IVOA Identifiers are used for events and their parent streams and servers, and both these latter will be described by IVOA Resource Metadata and stored in the registry.

In today's society, the role played by information is growing in significance as the everyday actions executed by people, and inside the organizations, rest on its manipulation. Aware of this reality, enterprises invest large amounts of their budget in information technology in order to shape up to their needs, which if not properly planned and executed, can result in incompatibilities between different information systems on the same organization. This work proposes a reference information architecture for the Portuguese public administration, and the methodology used to develop it. The development of the architecture was achieved by analyzing multiple contexts and their specific information architectures, following the different steps within the proposed methodology, that allowed to gather the set of information entities and respective attributes transversal to the public administration. As the Portuguese public administration presents as a vast context, this work is focused o...

Rapid advances in consumer electronics have led to the anomaly that consumer off-the-shelf gaming hardware and software provide better interactive graphics than military and other specialized systems costing orders of magnitude more. UTSAF (Unreal Tournament Semi-Automated Force) is bridging software written to take advantage of the power of gaming systems by allowing them to participate in distributed simulations with military simulators. UTSAF illustrates the use of multiagent technology to flexibly interconnect otherwise incompatible systems. This article describes an architectural approach for rapidly constructing middleware by taking advantage of built-in capabilities for processing, communication, and interoperation that a multiagent infrastructure provides. Several software agents based on Reusable Environment for Task-Structured Intelligent Networked Agents (RETSINAs) are used to support interoperability between military simulation nodes based on distributed interactive simu...

The IEEE 1516-2010-Standard for Modeling and Simulation High Level Architecture (HLA) range of standards are widely used for distributed simulation, interoperability, reusability and the modeling of large-scale systems in many application domains. However, the development of distributed simulations based on the HLA standards remains a challenging task that requires a considerable effort in terms of time, cost and expertise. The HLA Development Kit software Framework (DKF) is a software framework that aims to facilitate the development of HLA-based distributed simulations. This tutorial presents an overview of the DKF and a methodology for its use. Examples of the DKF in action are given from the Simulation Exploration Experience (SEE), a worldwide project led by NASA that annually gives the opportunity to build collaboratively a distributed simulation of a Moonbase.

Modern Complex Engineered Systems (CES) are the result of the ever-growing advances in science and technology that involve new paradigms, architectures and functionalities derived from multiple domains. Due to the nature of CES, which are composed of many heterogeneous components often designed and manufactured by organizations belonging to different engineering domains, is difficult to handle their whole lifecycle through classical Modeling and Simulation (M&S) techniques. To manage this complexity, it is necessary the definition of more suitable techniques capable of addressing, in an integrated way, the issues of reusability, interoperability and distribution of CES simulation models. In this context, great benefits may come from the joint exploitation of Distributed Simulation (DS) and Co-Simulation approaches. To concretely explore this opportunity, this article proposes a solution that relies on the integration of the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) and the IEEE 1516-High Level Architecture (HLA) standard. To prove the feasibility and validity of the defined solution, a case study concerning a scenario in the context of the Simulation Exploration Experience (SEE) international project, led by NASA, is also presented.

Demand for component-based software development is increasing exponentially due to highly dynamic environments confronting software systems in today's world. This is a result of factors such as frequent changes in business (user) requirements and challenging development schedules. Many of these challenges are indeed directly related to rapid changes in software and hardware technologies. To deal with this environment, this project develops a tool to generate component-based software from ...

As part of the Java CoG Kit we have defined a sophisticated workflow framework. This workflow framework projects an integrated approach towards executing tasks in Grid and non-Grid environments. One of the services needed is a convenient service to store, retrieve, and modify workflow components defined by the community similar to systems such as the comprehensive perl archive network. The availability of such a service will not only allow the definition of components useful for the greater grid community, but it will also be possible that it can be reused to support dynamically changing workflows managed by collaborative groups. In this paper, we present a simple extensible framework to design, build, and deploy a workflow repository service. This repository is intended to be used in ad-hoc Grids or in community Grids.

The emerging transformation from a product oriented economy to a service oriented economy based on Cloud environments envisions new scenarios where actual QoS (Quality of Service) mechanisms need to be redesigned. In such scenarios new models to negotiate and manage Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are necessary. An SLA is a formal contract which defines acceptable service levels to be provided by the Service Provider to its customers in measurable terms. SLAs are an essential component in building Cloud systems where commitments and assurances are specified, implemented, monitored and possibly negotiable. This is meant to guarantee that consumers' service quality expectations can be achieved. In fact, the level of customer satisfaction is crucial in Cloud environments, making SLAs one of the most important and active research topics. This paper presents an SLA implementation for negotiation, monitoring and renegotiation of agreements for Cloud services based on the CMAC (Condition Monitoring on A Cloud) platform. CMAC offers condition monitoring services in cloud computing environments to detect events on assets as well as data storage services.

The IEEE 1516-2010-High Level Architecture (HLA) for distributed simulation is growing in a variety of application domains due to its capabilities to enable the interoperability and reusability of distributed simulation components. However, the development of simulation models based on the HLA standard remains a challenging task that requires a considerable effort in terms of both time and cost. This paper provides an introduction tutorial on developing HLA-based simulations using the HLA Development Kit (DKF) framework. The tutorial guides developers through the necessary steps for defining and creating an HLA-based simulation, and explains how the HLA elements can be easily managed by using the DKF's services. The effectiveness of the DKF is proven by its concrete exploitation in the context of the Simulation Exploration Experience (SEE), a project led by NASA and which involves as partners several U.S. and European Institutions.

The authors would like to acknowledge the Combat and Materiel Developers in the US and NATO chains of command. Special thanks to Paul Ulrich, PM Battle Command, for his advice and counsel on planning events and demonstrations. Dick Lee, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, for his advocacy of the C2IEDM model as a means to achieve coalition interoperability. Colonel Stuart Whitehead, Lieutenant Colonel Andre Cota-Robles, and Dave Vincent of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command Program Integration Office for Battle Command for representing the needs of the warfighter and the outreach to the US Army. John Maguire and the SADI team for providing superb support to our effort to evangelize the widespread interoperability with this technology. Thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Guy “Pudge ” Townend, Canadian Army, for his direct manner and true professionalism. He always ensured that Allied Command Transformation’s role was well represented in this effort. To the NC3A LC2IS Tiger T...

The authors would like to acknowledge the Combat and Materiel Developers in the US and NATO chains of command. Special thanks to Paul Ulrich, PM Battle Command, for his advice and counsel on planning events and demonstrations. Dick Lee, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, for his advocacy of the C2IEDM model as a means to achieve coalition interoperability. Colonel Stuart Whitehead, Lieutenant Colonel Andre Cota-Robles, and Dave Vincent of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command Program Integration Office for Battle Command for representing the needs of the warfighter and the outreach to the US Army. John Maguire and the SADI team for providing superb support to our effort to evangelize the widespread interoperability with this technology. Thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Guy “Pudge ” Townend, Canadian Army, for his direct manner and true professionalism. He always ensured that Allied Command Transformation’s role was well represented in this effort. To the NC3A LC2IS Tiger T...

XSLT is a programming language, originally designed to convert XML documents to XHTML for presentation on browsers. XSLT works by matching predefined patterns to a source XML document and producing output for each kind of construct that is matched. In spite of its relatively humble goals, XSLT has the full power of a Turing machine, i.e. it is "Turing-complete." We show this is so by implementing an interpreter for a generic Turing machine in XSLT version 2.0. We use only the constructs available in the official specification of XSLT version 2.0 by the World Wide Web consortium, and no extensions to the core specification. Furthermore, we do not resort to string functions (which are also available in XSLT) but rather rely on the innate transformational capabilities of XSLT.

The authors would like to acknowledge the Combat and Materiel Developers in the US and NATO chains of command. Special thanks to Paul Ulrich, PM Battle Command, for his advice and counsel on planning events and demonstrations. Dick Lee, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, for his advocacy of the C2IEDM model as a means to achieve coalition interoperability. Colonel Stuart Whitehead, Lieutenant Colonel Andre Cota-Robles, and Dave Vincent of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command Program Integration Office for Battle Command for representing the needs of the warfighter and the outreach to the US Army. John Maguire and the SADI team for providing superb support to our effort to evangelize the widespread interoperability with this technology. Thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Guy “Pudge ” Townend, Canadian Army, for his direct manner and true professionalism. He always ensured that Allied Command Transformation’s role was well represented in this effort. To the NC3A LC2IS Tiger T...

This paper discusses an environment being developed to model a mission of the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Multipurpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) being launched from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to the International Space Station (ISS). Several models representing different phases of the mission such as the ground operations processes, engineered systems, and range components such as failure tree, blast, gas dispersion, and debris modeling are explained. These models are built using different simulation paradigms such as continuous, system dynamics, discrete-event, and agent-based simulation modeling. The High Level Architecture (HLA) is the backbone of this distributed simulation. The different design decisions and the information fusion scheme of this unique environment are explained in detail for decision-making. This can also help in the development of exploration missions beyond the International Space Station.

The SPE process uses multiple performance assessment tools depending on the state of the software and the amount of performance data available. This paper describes two XML based interchange formats that facilitate using a variety of performance tools in a plug-and-play manner thus enabling the use of the tool best suited to the analysis. The Software Performance Model Interchange Format (S-PMIF) is a common representation that is used to exchange information between (UML-based) software design tools and software performance engineering tools. On the other hand, the performance model interchange format (PMIF 2.0) is a common representation for system performance model data that can be used to move models among system performance modeling tools that use a queueing network model paradigm. This paper first defines an XML based S-PMIF based on an updated SPE meta-model Then it demonstrates the feasibility of using both the S-PMIF and the PMIF 2.0 to automatically translate an architecture description in UML into both a software performance model and a system performance model to study the performance characteristics of the architecture. This required the implementation of some extensions to the XPRIT software in order to export UML models into the S-PMIF and a new function in the SPE•ED software to import S-PMIF models, which are also described. The SPE process and an experimental proof of concept are presented.

This deliverable presents the modified cloud MoRe prototype which has been implemented according to the specifications layed out in the D2.1 deliverable. The cloud prototype has been implemented based on a pluggable storage architecture where multiple technologies can be combined in order to extend the system. The Apache Cassandra framework has been used as the prototype's storage layer with a content model inspired by the previous MoRe version (a content model that supports coxmplex digital objects with versionable datastreams). The core services implementation of the MoRe prototype are presented with the most significant to be the messaging service that acts as a glue for the rest of the core services. Finally, the scalability architecture and capabilities are presented in detail.

Knowledge management has become a vital strategy to conserve company knowledge and to reuse them. Research in this area has always been consenting on domain knowledge, domain ontology, expert systems etc. have been developed to manage professional domain knowledge, but less effort has been done on cooperative knowledge. In this paper, a cooperative knowledge discovery method DKD is proposed, we elaborated this method in design project knowledge management area.