A Distributed Simulation Platform for Urban Security

Effectively responding to a security incident that takes place inside a city, whether that is a routine road accident or a terrorist attack, is a complex and challenging task. Security forces and administrative bodies have to cooperate in order to share information, allocate resources and create the optimal response. In this paper we present a distributed simulation framework for studying security operations which take place inside an urban environment. More specifically, we model a cyber-physical system that aims at engaging malicious entities present inside a city. Our model includes the physical urban area, the participating actors and the information exchange among the participants. This design allows the evaluation of the effect of different communication patterns on the outcome of an operation. Finally, our platform allows us to investigate realistic scenarios with multiple participating actors and also gives us the opportunity to evaluate how different actor roles and responsibilities affect the overall operation outcome.