An execution environment for distributed simulations

This report documents a study performed by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI). The work was as a collaborative project based on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) concerning co-operation in defence research between Danish Defence Research Establishment, Finnish Ministry Of Defence, FFI and FOI. The topic of the study is execution environments for distributed simulations. Distributed simulation technology is important in several military applications. Currently its use is dominated by military training. However, applications such as (simulation based) acquisition, decision support and concept development and experimentation are becoming more and more important. The scope and objectives of this study is to outline a common, interoperable framework to support the execution of large-scale heterogeneous distributed simulations. Further more, this study investigates how the advances in Grid technologies, Web Services and Semantic Web technologies, can contribute to improved availability and reliability of complex distributed simulations. Finally, a preliminary design of a core set of services that should form the basis for the envisioned framework is presented.