Simulation Model Composition using BOMs

Development of simulation models is a multi-disciplinary and time/resource consuming process. An approach to reduce the associated costs and improving the usability of the models is to compose simulation models through reuse of predefined and already existing, validated simulation components. Using this method the simulation model is built in a component-based fashion. The Base Object Model, BOM, is a new standard for defining reusable and composable simulation components. The introduction of BOMs into the simulation community opens up the possibility of component based simulation development approach that is faster and more efficient than today´s simulation creation process. In this paper we describe a process that has been developed at the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) with the aim to speed up and improve the development of simulation models. This process utilizes the BOM concept coupled with ontologies in simulation development, and employs SRML (Simulation Reference Markup Language) as a means to define a component based simulation on a high-level. We present our experimental results and findings based on our implementation of the proposed process. Our experience indicates that including ontological information in BOMs will further increase their usability