MILITARY SIMULATION


Roger Smith, SIGSIM Vice Chair
Simulation Activities Abound

SIGSIM is growing and changing along with the rest of the computer and simulation world. We are becoming involved in more activities and extending our services to include the Internet. This column describes some of these activities and other items of interest.

SIGSIM Growth

In the last SIGSIM election two of the candidates were from Europe. Though they were not selected as officers, we felt that their interest in serving SIGSIM could be put to good use. As a result we established a SIGSIM European Committee with Ray Paul of Brunel University as Chairman and Enver Yucesan of INSEAD as Vice-Chairman. Their mission is to promote SIGSIM through European activities, conferences, and journals. This may lead to the creation of local SIGSIM Chapters or other events as they see fit.
Contact: Ray Paul, Ray_Paul@brunel.ac.uk

We are also in the process of forming a local SIGSIM chapter in Orlando, Florida. Many of the US military's leading simulation projects are centered there. Orlando is the home for projects like Distributed Interactive Simulation, Fire Support Combined Arms Tactical Trainer, Battle Lab Reconfigurable Simulator Initiative, Joint Simulation System, the Institute for Simulation and Training at the University of Central Florida, and Advanced Distributed Simulation Technology. Dr. Ratan Guha of the Computer Science department at UCF has agreed to serve as the Chairman of this chapter. We are still looking for a Vice-chairman and Secretary in order to begin the ACM chartering process.
Contact: Roger Smith, smithr@mystech.com

In 1997 ACM will celebrate its 50th anniversary. This celebration, dubbed "The 100-Year Journey in Computing", includes special activities and cooperation with other groups throughout the year. Activities culminate in the ACM97 Conference in San Jose, California. This conference will provide a forum in which leader from industry, government, and academia will share their vision for the next 50 years in computing. SIGSIM is organizing a multimedia exhibit which illustrates the application of simulation and other technologies for training Emergency Management Teams to respond to earthquakes, fires, hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters. This exhibit will include a working simulation and will illustrate the interrelationships between many different computer technologies to support complex activities. We are discussing a joint effort with the ACM SIGs representing graphics, human-computer interfaces, artificial intelligence, communications, multimedia, databases, security, algorithms, and educational applications.
Contact: Roger Smith, smithr@mystech.com
Web Page: http://www.acm.org/acm97

Internet Activities

The Internet is a hotbed of activity in simulation, just as it is in other areas. SIGSIM is currently creating an active web presence to serve members. The new SIGSIM Information Officer, Sudhir Srinivasan, is organizing and publishing material for these pages.
Contact: Sudhir Srinivasan, sudhirs@mystech.com
Web Page: http://www.acm.org/sigsim

SIGSIM is interested in communicating with its members electronically. Unfortunately, neither ACM nor SIGSIM have the e-mail addresses of most of the members. We would like to create a SIGSIM mailing list to distribute activity announcements and requests for volunteers. Please send your e-mail address.
Contact: Roger Smith, smithr@mystech.com

There is a simulation journal published only on the World Wide Web. The International Journal of Computer Simulation: Modeling and Analysis (CSMA) publishes refereed papers on a variety of simulation topics in postscript format. Abstracts of the papers can be read before deciding download the entire article. CSMA is edited by James Cremer at the University of Iowa.
Web Page: http://piranha.eng.buffalo.edu/simulation

Simulation professionals may also attend a virtual conference on the Internet. The 1996 Electronic Conference on Interoperability in Training Simulation (Elecsim 1996) is available through e-mail list server, ftp, and the Web. This is the third year this event has been held and will begin on April 8, 1996. Refereed papers are studied and discussed according to the conference schedule in much the same way papers are scheduled at traditional conferences. Elecsim 1996 includes plans for a virtual exhibit hall featuring applications of the Virtual Reality Modeling Language and Distributed Interactive Simulation. Web Page: http://www.mystech.com/~smithr/elecsim.html

There are a few Internet sites where you can run a real simulation through your Web browser. Paul Fishwick at the University of Florida has a computer CPU disk usage simulation written with the SimPack toolkit. Users set the inputs to the simulation, submit them to the program, and within a few seconds receive a graphical output of the results of the simulation. There is also a pointer at this site to a GPSS/H simulation in Germany which represents the capacity of an indoor swimming pool.
Web Page: http://www.cis.ufl.edu/~fishwick/CPUDisk

Related Events

The ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS) is adding an new focus area - Distributed Simulation. The area editor is Paul Reynolds of the University of Virginia. This will expand TOMACS papers to include those dealing with the application of distributed simulation to interactive training, test, evaluation, and engineering analysis. Fundamental research issues in this area include time management, variable resolution modeling, semantic models, communications and computational latency management, interoperability, object management, data visualization, system survivability, multi-level security, and software reuse.
Web Page:http://www.acm.org/pubs/tomacs

In support of ACM's 50th anniversary celebration SIGSIM is planning a special issue of Simulation Digest that focuses on the theme "The 100-Year Journey in Computing: A Simulation Perspective". For this issue we would like to publish papers and news items that discuss the potential future of simulation over the next 50 years, or that highlight significant accomplishments over the last 50 years. A more specific Call for Papers can be found in this issue of Simulation Digest.
Contact: Dana Wyatt, dana@ponder.csci.unt.edu

SIGSIM would like to have an attractive logo for use on conference announcements, publications, and marketing materials. We are seeking designs from members who are artistically inclined. These may be submitted on paper or as electronic files in a standard format (GIF, CGM, PIC, JPEG, etc.).
Contact: Ashvin Radiya, radiya@austin.ibm.com