De Co Sim: A method for Collaborative Simulation of Complex Systems

Abstract

The simulation of complex systems increasingly requires the collaboration of related researchers: domain experts (e.g. experts in the studied domains), modellers and computer scientists. However, the actual methods of modelling and simulation allow to produce only simulators that are used locally and considered as standalone applications. This kind of simulator hampers the exchange of these researchers; especially for the domain experts who are usually geographical distributed and not expert at using support tools. Our research focus on the collaboration among these scientists where many issues need to be addressed, e.g. scenario definition, parameter manipulation and results analysis. In this paper, we thus present a method, namely DeCoSim, supporting the collaboration among different scientists in the simulation of complex systems. A case study related to the modelling and simulation of Intra-Urban Daily Rhythms is presented to show the efficiency of the proposed method.