Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization Rick Severinghaus Chair SISO Executive Committee

SISO: 10+ years – and counting! EuroSIW 2007 SISO: 10+ years – and counting!

Workshop Theme New Challenges for Interoperable Simulation in the areas of Transportation, Virtual Prototyping, and Homeland/Societal Security.

Outline Sponsors “Orientation” The SISO organization Reaching for Interoperability The Future of M&S A Way Ahead SISO Vision Future SISO Events

SISO Sponsors

From the domain of spoken & written languages and dictionaries “Orientation” From the domain of spoken & written languages and dictionaries “The task of classifying all the words of language, or what's the same thing, all the ideas that seek expression, is the most stupendous of logical tasks. Anybody but the most accomplished logician must break down in it utterly; and even for the strongest man, it is the severest possible tax on the logical equipment and faculty.” if you buy my argument about defining sets of 'communities of practice', then this is an elegant quote summing up the difficulty of building supporting ontology and taxonomy to guide and constrain a defined community....... Charles Sanders Peirce, letter to editor B. E. Smith of the Century Dictionary

“Orientation” Translated to the domain of M&S and the development of interoperability standards…. “The task of classifying all the words of M&S, or what's the same thing, all the ideas that Conceptual Models seek to express, is the most stupendous of logical tasks. Anybody but the most accomplished simulationist must break down in it utterly; and even for the strongest M&S guru, it is the severest possible tax on the logical equipment and faculty.” if you buy my argument about defining sets of 'communities of practice', then this is an elegant quote summing up the difficulty of building supporting ontology and taxonomy to guide and constrain the defined community....... “NOT” Charles Sanders Peirce, letter to editor B. E. Smith of the Century Dictionary … But a modification to make a point!

SISO – Who are we? Non-profit, chartered in U.S. as 501(c)(3), 1996. Sponsors: about 2 dozen – multi-national group from industry, government and academia Membership: about 1000. ~ 5000 folks monitor our public “discussion groups” on the Web Activities: 3 SIWs and 1 BRIMS per year. Two SIWs in US, one in Europe. Yearly attendance: 1000 to 1500 Core volunteer group of about 120 to 150 people with years of M&S experience, some going back to earliest days of the Internet Standards: 4 SISO standards and 4 SISO-sponsored standards. 12 PDGs, 4 PSGs, 8 SGs, 3 SSGs Our senior committees: 32 people from 5 countries (Canada, France, Sweden, UK, US) and multiple government agencies (US: MSCO, JFCOM; NATO) 5 User Forums, 11 Specialty Areas. 8 Study Groups - 6 under SAC - 1 under EXCOM/SAC (LVC) - 1 under CC (Message-SIM) 3 Standing Study Groups - 1 under SAC - 1 under EXCOM/SAC (Australia) - 1 under EXCOM (Econ) 4 Product Support Groups - DIS, BOM, TDL, EDRS

What is SISO’s Role? Be ‘the’ Open Community Forum to: Identify standards that enable interoperability and reuse Develop, review, accredit, and archive standards Get community buy-in, grass-roots support for, and evangelize standards Be the “nexus” for related and complementary simulation products Provide a stable, open interface for COTS product vendors to trust & develop M&S standards Collect and distribute community Feedback to and from industry, academia, and government across the International M&S community

A Brief History of SISO 1989 - Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) Workshops began, to generate open standards for Army Combined Arms Tactical Trainer (CCTT) procurement 1993, 1995, 1998 - DIS Standards (IEEE 1278) approved 1996/7 - DIS Workshops disbanded, SISO incorporated as 501(c)(3) in 1996; semi-annual Workshops (SIWs) continue 1999 - First SISO standard (RPR FOM) promulgated 2000 - SISO develops HLA standards (IEEE 1516) - Annual SISO European Workshops begin 2003 - IEEE Computer Society recognizes SISO as sponsor committee 2005 - NATO Modeling & Simulation Group (NMSG) recognizes SISO Note: NATO has completed review (as of May 2007) of a Technical Cooperation Agreement (TCA) between SISO and NATO. This will provide formal NATO recognition of SISO and establish the basis for ongoing cooperation.

Signing Ceremony for Cooperative Agreement with US DoD SISO Liaisons IEEE ISO ITEA SCS AFCEA SimSummit INCITS ACM SIGSIM NATO NMSG Australian SSG Signing Ceremony for Cooperative Agreement with US DoD Within NATO: NMSG recognition of SISO as an accredited Standards Development Organization (SDO) Col Jerry Glasow Rick Severinghaus

SISO and SISO Sponsored Standards SISO-STD-001 Real Time Platform Reference FOM SISO-STD-002 Link 16 Simulation (Approved 10 Jul 06) SISO-STD-003 BOM Template Specification (Approved 8 May 06) SISO-STD-004 Dynamic Link Compatible (DLC) HLA API IEEE 1278 series Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) IEEE 1516 series High Level Architecture (HLA) ISO/IEC 18025:2005 Environmental Data Coding Specification (EDCS) (Finalized Jun 05) ISO/IEC 18026:2006(E) Spatial Reference Model (SRM) (Finalized Jun 06)

SISO Activities 2006/2007 Participation in/Outreach to other organizations and activities NATO Modeling & Simulation Group 2nd Annual Congressional M&S Leadership Summit SimSummit The Society For Modeling And Simulation (MoSiS), Sweden Medicine Meets Virtual Reality Expansion of Space Forum activity Participation in SimTecT 2007 Brisbane, Australia Develop and expand activity in the “Economics of M&S” Forum. This slide presented at the Spring 07 SIW in Norfolk.

2nd Annual U.S. M&S Leadership Summit February 2007 In cooperation with the U.S. Congressional Modeling and Simulation (M&S) Caucus, Congressman J. Randy Forbes, Chair All day session addressing M&S issues of interest on a national scale SISO well represented, participating as discussion leads, and as team leaders for collection and summarizing issues for the Caucus membership

Reaching for Interoperability Vital if the M&S world is to leverage earlier work. Strong standards are a must, and also a forum in which to develop them. SISO exists to provide such a Forum. Without one, we are doomed to “re-invent the wheel” - and never mature past our infantile stage. Everything SISO has done to date addresses less than 5% of the necessary solution space. SISO and Standards development are the enemies of the Forces of the “Stovepipe”! “ SISO needs to be holding – and pulling on – the rope - from the upper end! and, with the analogy of having many communities of practice for building interoperabiity, there needs to be a number of ropes! .. With rope “bridges” among them in some cases. Not a plateau – the objectives keep moving

The Future of M&S Current State of M&S - as a marketplace Current State of M&S – as a discipline Issues in M&S Standardization Problem Space LVC Interoperability Study A Way Ahead

Current State of M&S – as a marketplace Fragmented marketplace for both skilled M&S professionals and M&S products Little consensus among M&S stakeholders about their goals Recurring quality and productivity issues Unclear career opportunities, leading to a high rate of practitioner exodus Sparse (and untracked) research funding for M&S technology development Difficulty separating core M&S technology from its applications. Slide intended to provide pavement on which to walk discussion of currrent M&S broad issues.

Current State of M&S – as a discipline Strong ethics Statements adopted by many professional organizations Cooperative professional organizations Fledging efforts to increase cooperation – joint conferences, SimSummit membership Well defined Body of Knowledge Program initiated – at least within US Common education programs Programs being developed Professional certification programs A US program in place, acceptance issues Available employment statistics Effort under weigh, arguments need better support Defined research agenda No program in place or planned. More detail on where M&S standards as a discipline – created from a US perspective, but its fair to point out this applies internationally. AND, makes the point, that we in SISO do not have an equivalent status slide to describe any other community within/across the international community.

Key issue: Finding the right ‘mix’ of standards ISSUES in M&S - architectures/frameworks - communications - databases - networks - interfaces vs. Stovepipe developments - Ontologies & Taxonomies Semantic interoperability Substantive interoperability intellectual property protection - cultural adjustment and buy-in SISO needs to take a proactive role in setting agendas for making progress in some/all of these areas. To date, this has not been the case, except in certain constrained areas. regards ‘sunset’ line: ‘finding the right mix of standards’ is expression currently in vogue with US DoD M&S circles. Systems of Systems Interoperability Key issue: Finding the right ‘mix’ of standards

Standardization Problem Space Modeling Standards Simulation Standards Purposes of model Level of fidelity Boundary sets/model limits Model applicability Input standards Output standards Presentation layer standards Security Standards Purposes of simulation Business “standards” & rules Domain applicability/limits Taxonomy Data Dictionary Issues Entity Ownership Middleware Security Standards Technology standards Protocols Intellectual Property issues Domain boundaries/standards

Lightweight Federates? A US DoD Initiative – LVC Interoperability Study 06 07 08 09 10 11 TENA MW R5 TENA MW R? TENA MW R? Lightweight Federates? GW A GW B GW D SPP/HPC? GW C Grid Computing? DIS IEEE 1278.?? DIS IEEE 1278.1A Interoperability between Live, Virtual & Constructive (LVC) assets is essential to providing the highest quality warfighter training. However, the current LVC environment in common use are not interoperable. The High Level Architecture (HLA) and Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) are most often used in the Modeling & Simulation (M&S) community for integrating virtual and constructive assets, while the Test & Training Enabling Architecture (TENA) is widely used to integrate live assets into exercises/events. Today we use multiple protocols, gateways and object models to bring the Live Virtual and Constructive Environment together. This causes interoperability issues in bringing our federations together in one common operational environment.. Multiple architectures increase complexity, disconnects, duplication of effort, and risk. Is the solution a common open-standards, object-based LVC architecture? I think it remains an empirical question. – a Common LVC Integrating Architecture seems a good concept to pursue, at least for US DoD, who have a ‘known’ domain or community of interest to serve. JFCOM’ study pursues a notional concept that allows for the exploration and experimentation of higher levels of interoperability between LVC systems – with the caveat, and objective, that it will serve US DoDs interests. for the larger community that SISO represents, it is not clear that SISO’s ‘boundaries for this Study Group should align closely with the IA study. Clearly, loosely aligned and complementary are appropriate and desired, but it remains to be seen what the SISO SG will develop and produce from its efforts. ALSP TENA – Test & Training Enabling Architecture DIS – Distributed Interactive Simulation HLA – High Level Architecture ALSP – Aggregate Level Simulation Protocol RTI – Run-Time Infrastructure SPP – Scalable Parallel Processing GW – Gateway HPC – High Performance Computing SISO LVC SG – a parallel effort

A way ahead for M&S M&S communities of practice Establish consensus on agenda Top level Initiatives Technology Professional/Workforce Development Industrial Development Business Practices Need leadership effort to develop, coordinate and monitor development and execution of specific actions within each of these areas. Issues to address Ontology and taxonomy work Body of knowledge Developing semantic/substantive interoperability Business model driving the community Professional Certification top level outline for progress in developing agreement and buy-in for creating a some set (indeterminate number) of Communities of Practice within which to establish workable Conceptual Model(s), Ontology, and supporting taxonomies. admittedly , does not address interfaces between and among to different, established communities of practice, but that comes later. Manage & develop, as stakeholders and community sponsors identified and represented

SISO Vision – a start Engage in the broader and more diverse M&S community we see developing Grow the concept of M&S communities of practice Engage community to identify enablers and obstacles to more widespread use of M&S Begin dialogue to chart a course for addressing the larger set of issues – that go beyond interoperability Broaden SISO activity to become a Forum to address effective use of M&S in its broadest sense

Our International Outlook "The shadow of the moon falls on Earth as seen from the International Space Station, 230 miles above the planet, during a total solar eclipse at about 4:50 a.m. EST March 29, 2006. This digital photo was taken by the Expedition 12 crew, who are wrapping up a six-month mission on the ISS. Visible near the shadow are portions of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea and the coast of Turkey.”

Future SISO Events 2007 Fall SIW 2008 Spring SIW 16 - 21 September 2007 Holiday Inn - Orlando, Florida 2008 Spring SIW 13 - 18 April 2008 Providence, RI

Thank you! In presented brief, in this spot there is a generic photo of a SISO registration booth – taken in Toulouse, as it happens. Can send if you want it. This photo of registration desk at our conference in Toulouse France, summer of 2006.