Scenario development: A Model-Driven Engineering perspective

Scenario development starts with capturing scenarios from the users and leads to the design and the development of the simulation environment to execute these scenarios. This paper proposes a scenario development process adopting a Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) perspective. It takes scenario development and the use of scenarios in simulation environment development put forth in IEEE Recommended Practice for Distributed Simulation Engineering and Execution Process (DSEEP) as a starting point. It then constructs a basic vocabulary including the definitions of operational, conceptual, and executable scenarios. Following MDE principles, scenario development is viewed as a series of model transformations. Operational scenarios, mostly defined in a natural language, are first transformed into conceptual scenarios, which conform to a formal metamodel. Then conceptual scenarios can be transformed into executable scenarios specified using a specific scenario definition language. Furthermore, it is also possible to generate the constructs of simulation environment design and development using model transformations. In this regard, a conceptual scenario metamodel is proposed adopting the Base Object Model metamodel as an example. Then this metamodel is used to present the proposed process with a sample operational scenario and conceptual scenario excerpts. Samples are shown how model transformation can be employed for developing a Federation Object Model and an executable scenario file.