A Taxonomy of Homeland Security Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis Applications

Published

April 14, 2008

Author(s)

Charles R. McLean, Sanjay Jain, Yung-Tsun T. Lee

Abstract

The effective use of modeling, simulation, and analysis (MSA) applications could greatly enhance our ability to carry out the homeland security mission.  These applications can be used to evaluate vulnerabilities in the nation s critical infrastructure as well as engineer security systems to respond to those vulnerabilities.  They can also be used to train participants in the National Incident Management System and assess their performance, plan operations such as responses to terrorist attacks and natural disasters, and support decision-making processes within homeland security agencies.  Currently, the development of MSA tools has been conducted largely on an ad hoc and piecemeal basis.  There is very little, if any, coordination of MSA development activities across government agencies, the research community, the commercial software sector, and various standards organizations.  Without coordination and appropriate standards, there is little possibility of software re-use or the establishment of reference data sets that meet homeland security needs.  This report describes a taxonomy, or classification system, of MSA application areas that are critical to meeting homeland security needs. The taxonomy will be used to classify applications and develop requirements analyses for those applications. These analyses will in turn be used to identify a recommended suite of existing standards and standards gaps that must be filled.  With these standards recommendations, agency program managers, software developers and standards development organizations can work together to resolve interoperability issues between MSA software applications and achieve better re-use of software and data sets.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) Spring 2008 SIW Workshop

Conference Dates

April 14-18, 2008

Conference Location

Providence, RI

Conference Title

2008 SISO SIW Workshop

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Homeland security, taxonomy, classification, simulation, interoperability, standards

Citation

McLean, C. , Jain, S. and Lee, Y. (2008), A Taxonomy of Homeland Security Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis Applications, Proceedings of the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) Spring 2008 SIW Workshop, Providence, RI, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=824440 (Accessed April 19, 2024)