Medieval military logistics: a case for distributed agent-based simulation

Visual Heritage in the Digital Age

“…For a number of years, key research being carried out in Birmingham has also explored large-scale computer Fig. 12.12 Other scenes-from clockwise, agents build a campfire and walk away, agent harvesting hazel nuts, burning a clearing, and suffering a sudden temperature change modelling and simulation (Ch'ng 2007b(Ch'ng , 2009aCraenen and Theodoropoulos 2010b), and interactive visualisation (Ch 0 ng 2007a). These studies focus on the investigation of complex algorithms and data structures required for exa-scale multi-agent systems simulation.…”

“…Here the project will take advantage of pioneering work undertaken at Birmingham on the distributed simulation of multi-agent systems models. The EPSRC-funded PDES-MAS framework provides multiple agents concurrent access to the shared state of the simulation in a scalable manner by a balanced distribution of state variables around a tree-like network of peer-servers (Craenen and Theodoropoulos 2010a;Craenen et al 2010b;Gaffney and Murgatroyd Forthcoming). This research is built upon the framework for the Doggerland project, and algorithms developed for the partitioning, data distribution and synchronisation appropriate for the simulations utilised in the project.…”

Military reconstructive simulation in the cloud to aid battlefield excavations

“…It is worth noting that while the use of ABMs is considered in current military training [25], it is almost unknown in military history research. Nevertheless, some interesting experiments have been published in the last decade, like the study of the WWII submarine campaign in the Bay of Biscay [35], [23], [22], [3], guerilla warfare [13] or the logistic system of a medieval army [7].…”

Trends in Archaeological Simulation

“…In a similar vein, although using a rather more complex and computationally distributed (parallelised) agent-based simulation, Rubio-Campillo et al (2011) aim to contribute to the development of battlefield archaeology by simulating a battle and subsequent attrition of material by taphonomic processes and archaeological sampling. Analysis of past military action is also the 'use-case' for another project to develop a distributed agent-based simulation framework capable of handling the 'study [of] behaviour dynamics at a larger scale, involving tens of thousands of agents' (Murgatroyd et al 2011, p. 489): the 'Medieval Warfare on the Grid' project will eventually be used for a logistical analysis of the Byzantine army's march to the AD 1071 battle of Manzikert in Anatolia (Craenen et al 2010). Similar work by Rubio-Campillo et al (2013), focused on European military tactics during the Eighteenth Century War of the Spanish Succession, perhaps takes us even further away from what might reasonably be labelled archaeological simulation.…”