military reconstructive simulation in the cloud to aid battlefield excavations
DESCRIPTION
Archaeological studies on battlefields may see great benefits from simulated military engagements: simulations help testing hypotheses based on historical data and may also help with validating methodologies used on the site. Such methods, however, require high-performance computing expertise and considerable computational power. With the emergence of on-demand computing instances in the cloud, distributed computations have become available to technically every organization or individual. This puts large-scale battlefield simulations within the reach of archaeologists, and the cloud paradigm also lowers the required technological expertise, potentially leading to a more widespread adoption of such simulation methods.TRANSCRIPT
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Military Reconstructive Simulation in the Cloud to Aid
Battlefield Excavations
Peter Wittek – University of BorasXavier Rubio-Campillo – Barcelona Supercomputing Centre
Introduction
Agent-Based Modelling is one of the most promising social simulation techniques.Despite its promises, the use of ABM is still limited in Humanities & Social Sciences
Can we improve the methodology using cloud computing?
Reconstructing military engagements
Why do we need to simulate the past?
Agent-Based Modelling of past conflicts
Computational challenges
A case study: improving battlefield archaeology using distributed ABM
Discussion
Classical Agent-Based Modelling
Inspired on SugarScape model
Two key concepts:Agent → individual entityEnvironment → cellular automata
The agent is defined by:Attributes defining its internal stateA “step” method containing predefined rules of behavior
Some issues
Size of simulation: some emergent properties are scale-dependent
Number of simulations?
Complex analysis of simulations:Spatiotemporal patternsVisualization of multivariate statistics
Predefined Behavior
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Rule-based behavior is interesting for simple models, but...
Can we extend them to realistic models?
Can we avoid hand-coded self-fulfilling prophecies?
Is it possible to validate the scientific quality of complicated models?
What about replication?
Goal Oriented Agents
A possible solution is the introduction of advanced AI agents.Can we create goal-orientedagents?Each time step our agents will:
Update knowledgeBuild a model of their environmentConstruct a plan of actions to achieve goals
Goal Oriented Agents
Next step forward...HPC?
These solutions show the need to improve computing resources for scientific social simulations:
a. More executions b. Larger simulations c. Advanced AI agents
a can be easily fixed with several computers executing simulations sequentiallyb & c will need distributed memory architectures:
ClustersCloud ComputingHigh-Performance Computing
The Pandora framework
We need specific utilities to execute a simulation in a distributed environment.Pandora is an open-source C++ framework developed to accomplish this task:
Automatic generation of code for parallel executionCassandra: an ABM visualization toolGIS support (GRASS)Statistical support (R package)
Key concepts: Agent & World
HPC in the cloud
Social science projects should be able to develop computing intensive ABMs even if they don't have access to supercomputers
The use of a cloud-based Beowulf cluster could solve this problem
What if an ABN could be deployed in any Beowulf computer cluster?
Deploying Pandora in the cloud
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A practical case study
Computer simulation of a XVIIIth century battlefield archaeological excavation
Battlefield Archaeology
Archaeologists find the result of concentrating thousands of humans and machines in a small space during a small step of time (1-2 days)The methodology dates from 1970, and is based on the use of metal detectors through a systematic exploration of terrain.It has been modernized by the introduction of Geographical Information Systems and GPS:
Individual tracking of explored routes and remainsSpatial AnalysisGeostatistics
Methodology
Methodology
Questions
Can we distinguish the dynamics of combats?Can we calculate...?
Combat distanceNumber of soldiersDirection of combatResult (advances, retreats...)
In addition, how can archaeological works affect interpretation? Are our hypothesis well based?
To answer these questions we developed an Agent-Based Model of the battle AND the excavation
Visualization: Cassandra
Analysis: R & Grass
Discussion
Agent-Based Models are well suited to generate virtual archaeological records.
The technique requires high computational costs (to model individual behavior and explore parameter space).
Cloud Computing can fulfill these needs if researchers have the correct tools to model their problems.
Conclusion
A decrease in the technological barrier of simulation can be accomplished combining tools like Pandora with Cloud Computing.
Once a simulation is deployed, the image can be shared between researchers, and the models reused.
Cloud Computing provides to Humanities departments without access to supercomputers a reasonable solution to deal with computational costs.
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Thank you!
ABM can improve the way battlefields are excavatedCloud-based HPC can solve the computational challenge of these simulationsThe increase in CPU power will benefit the research on Humanities
If you are interested you can test Pandora at: http://github.com/xrubio/pandora