Distributed spatio-temporal modeling and simulation

The objective of upcoming research in the field of geoprocessing is to evolve interoperability standards to develop flexible and scalable controlling and simulation services. In order to overcome the limitations of proprietary solutions, efforts have been made to support interoperability among simulation models and geo information systems (GIS). Existing standards in the domain of spatial information and spatial services define geoinformation (GI) in a more or less static way. Though time can be handled as an additional attribute, its representation is not explicitly specified. In contrast, as the standard for distributed heterogeneous simulation, the High Level Architecture (HLA) provides a framework for distributed time-variant simulation processes but HLA is lacking in supporting spatial information. A Web-based distributed spatio-temporal interoperability architecture DALI integrating these initiatives is presented. The long term goal of this DALI architecture is making standardized off-the-shelf GI and simulation services usable for highly specialized simulation and controlling applications.