Simulation as a service: A design approach for large-scale energy network simulations

In the ongoing GEWISS project it is planned to implement a geographical heat information and simulation system. It shall provide a planning and simulation tool for the interlinking of urban development and district heating network development to support the political decision making process in the City of Hamburg. The system shall combine macroscopic and microscopic simulations to a co-simulation system. The simulation as a service approach is presented as a loosely-coupled scalable solution to realize large-scale energy network simulations. It is based on cloud computing technologies for the optimal utilization of computing resources in heterogeneous simulation-infrastructures. This approach can be used to realize simulation systems integrating Multi-Agent System (MAS) based simulations and other simulation technologies. For practical evaluation, two implementation approaches based on a MAS platform as a service-oriented solution will be presented and compared to an approach involving standard web-service technologies.