Components and reuse in scenario development processes for distributed simulation environments

摘要

As scenarios play an important role in planning, engineering and executing a distributed simulation environment, current engineering processes like the Distributed Simulation Engineering and Execution Process (DSEEP) require the development of appropriate scenarios. During the simulation environment engineering process the initial operational scenario provided by the user is refined into one or more conceptual scenarios and finally the executable scenarios are derived which are used for initializing and stimulating the participating simulation systems and other member applications. Although scenarios are one of the most important aspects of military (distributed) simulation environments, to our knowledge a consensus about components or building blocks of scenarios which might be reused across several scenario development processes, does not exist. In effect, due to this missing component-oriented structure, reuse in context of scenarios refers to the reuse of scenarios as a whole while parts of scenarios are rarely reused (if there is any reuse at all). In order to enable reuse in scenario development processes for distributed simulation environments, we propose a component-oriented structure which allows assembling scenarios from smaller, self-contained building blocks. To set the stage, firstly, we give an overview about scenarios in military simulation environments, their embedding in the simulation environment engineering process and lay out a comprehensive set of documentation items for specifying military scenarios. Secondly, the main part of this paper presents our thoughts on possible ways how to decompose a scenario into smaller building blocks and how these building blocks may be rearranged to assemble new scenarios. We discuss briefly which standards are currently available to support this activity (e.g., BOM) and conclude with a proposal for future research and development activities to advance this area.