Grid-based platform for disaster response plan simulation over Internet

Efficient emergency response for disasters need systematic response preparedness and plan. Distributed computer simulation drilling can help to perfect the disaster response plan. Since the disaster response simulation drilling participants are geographically distributed and subjected to different organizations, they need to communicate via the Internet. The HLA-based distributed simulation has been widely used, but presently it is difficult to implement a HLA-based distributed simulation application that needs resources from multi-organizations or communicates on the public Internet environment. The advantages of computational Grid in distributed resources collaboration and management provide a new development opportunity for distributed simulation. In this paper, a distributed simulation framework which realizes extending HLA/RTI to Internet based on Grid service is proposed. The framework aims to the advantage of Grid technology as well as the reusability and interoperability of simulation modules. The results of experiments of the prototype indicate the feasibility of the framework, which provide a platform for disaster emergency response drilling distributed simulation over Internet. At the end of paper, the future development plan has been discussed.