A Simulation-as-a-Service Framework Facilitating Webgis Based Installation Planning

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Installation Planning is constrained by both natural and social conditions, especially for spatially sparse but functionally connected facilities. Simulation is important for proper deploy in space and configuration in function of facilities to make them a cohesive and supportive system to meet users' operation needs. Based on requirement analysis, we propose a framework to combine GIS and Agent simulation to overcome the shortness in temporal analysis and task simulation of traditional GIS. In this framework, Agent based simulation runs as a service on the server, exposes basic simulation functions, such as scenario configuration, simulation control, and simulation data retrieval to installation planners. At the same time, the simulation service is able to utilize various kinds of geoprocessing services in Agents' process logic to make sophisticated spatial inferences and analysis. This simulation-as-a-service framework has many potential benefits, such as easy-to-use, on-demand, shared understanding, and boosted performances. At the end, we present a preliminary implement of this concept using ArcGIS javascript api 4.0 and ArcGIS for server, showing how trip planning and driving can be carried out by agents.

Architectural Design Space for Modelling and Simulation as a Service: A Review

“…Zheng et al [64] have developed a WebGIS-based service architecture consisting of loosely coupled simulations services (modules) to support users in analyzing spatial configurations of functionally interrelated facilities. Two main services in this architecture are Simulation Service (a loosely coupled service) and Geographic Service (a stateless service).…”

“…Impacts: The platform facilitates the service-in-the-loop approach by combining real and simulated services for simulating business process tasks. § Simulation models should be extensible (i.e., easily being added, changed, deleted) [64]. § Model-driven architecture support for simulation design [67].…”

“…We have found a set of papers aiming at characterizing simulation models and services [1, 21,39,45,47,50,56,64]. Our analysis found three characteristics of simulation models.…”

“…Zheng et al [64] also propose that facility (space) users' activity simulation in the proposed WebGIS based architecture should be designed and executed separately from other services. This loosely coupled service is run on the backend server and is considered as a reusable resource for other services.…”

“…For example, users are allowed to stop or readjust long-running simulations. In [64], users are also provided with real-time simulation results via WebSocket protocol. In WEEZARD ecosystem [49], users are provided with three distinct views to check the status of simulation jobs: 2D local view, 2D georeferenced view, and 3D view.…”