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An advanced object-based software framework for complex ecosystem modeling and simulation
Abstract
Military land managers and decision makers face an ever increasing challenge to balance maximum flexibility for the mission with a diverse set of multiple land use, social, political, and economic goals. In addition, these goals encompass environmental requirements for maintaining ecosystem health and sustainability over the long term. Spatiotemporal modeling and simulation in support of adaptive ecosystem management can be best accomplished through a dynamic, integrated, and flexible approach that incorporates scientific and technological components into a comprehensive ecosystem modeling framework. The Integrated Dynamic Landscape Analysis and Modeling System (IDLAMS) integrates ecological models and decision support techniques through a geographic information system (GIS)-based backbone. Recently, an object-oriented (OO) architectural framework was developed for IDLAMS (OO-IDLAMS). This OO-IDLAMS Prototype was built upon and leverages from the Dynamic Information Architecture System (DIAS) developed by Argonne National Laboratory. DIAS is an object-based architectural framework that affords a more integrated, dynamic, and flexible approach to comprehensive ecosystem modeling than was possible with the GIS-based integration approach of the original IDLAMS. The flexibility, dynamics, and interoperability demonstrated through this case study of an object-oriented approach have the potential to provide key technology solutions for many of the military's multiple-use goals and needs for integrated natural resource planning and ecosystem management.
... DIAS is domain-neutral, meaning that it is not designed for simulations specific to any one discipline or subject area; rather it supports the development of simulations for virtually any type of application. DIAS has been successfully utilized to build a wide range of simulations, including dynamic terrain-and weather-influenced military unit mobility assessment; integrated land management at military bases (Sydelko et al. [17,18]) a dynamic virtual oceanic environment; clinical, physiological, and logistical aspects of health care delivery; avian social behavior and population dynamics (Rewerts et al. [19]); and studies of agricultural sustainability under environmental stress in ancient Mesopotamia (Christiansen [16]). ...
... In Figure 4, the GeoViewer is displaying four different aspects of a Integrated Dynamic Landscape and Analysis System (IDLAMS) simulation. IDLAMS is a DIAS application for modeling military land management and land use impacts on vegetation and wildlife habitat on army installations (Sydelko et al. [17,18]). DIAS can also link to external GISs that can perform spatial analysis and modeling functions. ...
Decision makers involved in brownfields redevelopment and long-term stewardship must consider environmental conditions, future-use potential, site ownership, area infrastructure, funding resources, cost recovery, regulations, risk and liability management, community relations, and expected return on investment in a comprehensive and integrated fashion to achieve desired results. Successful brownfields redevelopment requires the ability to assess the impacts of redevelopment options on multiple interrelated aspects of the ecosystem, both natural and societal. The Dynamic Information Architecture System (DIAS) is a flexible, extensible, object-oriented framework for developing and maintaining complex multidisciplinary simulations of a wide variety of application domains. The modeling domain of a specific DIAS-based simulation is determined by (1) software objects that represent the real-world entities that comprise the problem space (atmosphere, watershed, human), and (2) simulation models and other data processing applications that express the dynamic behaviors of the domain entities. Models and applications used to express dynamic behaviors can be either internal or external to DIAS, including existing legacy models written in various languages (FORTRAN, C, etc.). The ability to simulate the complex interplay of multimedia processes makes DIAS a promising tool for constructing applications for comprehensive community planning, including the assessment of multiple development and redevelopment scenarios.
... [e.g. Sydelko, et al, 2000, Fedra, 1996, Djokic, 1996. The highest level of integration is an embedded system, one in which GIS and modeling functions are interwoven elements of a software system (or full integration). ...
Most of the environmental problems do have an obvious spatial dimension. In this regard Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be widely used in various environmental disciplines for solving environmental problems. Therefore linking GIS and environmental models is becoming common and interest in merging the technologies. Currently different methods are used for linking which are based on loosely or tightly coupled methods in standalone systems or distributed computing architecture. Developer and the user are confronted with tedious batch conversion tasks, import/export obstacles, and distributed resource access barriers imposed by heterogeneous processing and data environments in the loosely coupled of standalone systems. The tightly coupled of standalone systems as isolated islands are no longer appropriate for heterogeneous environmental disciplines due to the fact that they are still discipline specific. Due to the lack of interoperability, there is no communication in an interdisciplinary effort between GIS and environmental models. The motivations for adopting new methods are derived from the essential needs for supporting an efficient communication by promoting interoperability between GIS and modelers. The standard protocols, in a service oriented architecture, prepare syntactic interface for
... To allow for greater flexibility and adaptation, pieces of the model were rebuilt in an objectoriented version called OO-IDLAMS based on the general purpose modeling framework DIAS (Dynamic Information Architecture System) (Sydelko, 2000). Rather than continuing to rely on GRASS, which is not object-oriented, OO-IDLAMS uses an object-oriented GIS as well as the DIAS framework for interaction. ...
... GIS has been widely used to visualize, integrate, and analyze spatial data pertinent to evaluating changes in environmental ecological systems (Fedra 1996;Frysinger 1996;Zandbergen 1998;Ortigosa et al. 2000). The use of GIS software as a model integration framework is often preferred because of the important role of spatial and temporal dynamics in evaluating complex ecosystem processes (Sydelko et al. 2000). The risk assessment process is based on exposure pathways that describe the means by which a receptor is exposed to a contaminant or chemical of concern (Mauro et al. 2000). ...
Groundwater contaminated with arsenic (As), when extensively used for irrigation, causes potentially long term detrimental effects to the landscape. Such contamination can also directly affect human health when irrigated crops are primarily used for human consumption. Therefore, a large number of humans are potentially at risk worldwide due to daily As exposure. Numerous previous studies have been severely limited by small sample sizes which are not reliably extrapolated to large populations or landscapes. Human As exposure and risk assessment are no longer simple assessments limited to a few food samples from a small area. The focus of more recent studies has been to perform risk assessment at the landscape level involving the use of biomarkers to identify and quantify appropriate health problems and large surveys of human dietary patterns, supported by analytical testing of food, to quantify exposure. This approach generates large amounts of data from a wide variety of sources and geographic information system (GIS) techniques have been used widely to integrate the various spatial, demographic, social, field, and laboratory measured datasets. With the current worldwide shift in emphasis from qualitative to quantitative risk assessment, it is likely that future research efforts will be directed towards the integration of GIS, statistics, chemistry, and other dynamic models within a common platform to quantify human health risk at the landscape level. In this paper we review the present and likely future trends of human As exposure and GIS application in risk assessment at the landscape level.
... OO-IDLAMS is a prototype application that was developed to demonstrate the advantages of an object-oriented architecture approach to providing military environmental managers and decisionmakers with a strategic, adaptive approach to integrated natural resources planning and ecosystem management (Sydelko et al. 2000). Built upon the Dynamic Information Architecture System (DIAS) (Christiansen 2000), OO-IDLAMS is used to predict land conditions (e.g., vegetation, wildlife habitat) by simulating changes in military lands for given training intensities and land management practices. ...
GeoViewer is an object-oriented GIS that easily attaches dynamic mapping capabilities to any object-oriented decision analysis application. GeoViewer provides transparent linkage to any object's data and behaviors as well as optimized spatial geometry representation. Tools are included for typical GIS functionality (e.g., zoom, pan, query), data ingestion, linkage to external models, and integration with other frameworks.
Most of the environmental problems do have an obvious spatial dimension. In this regard Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be widely used in various environmental disciplines for solving environmental problems. Therefore linking GIS and environmental models is becoming common and interest in merging the technologies. Currently different methods are used for linking which are based on loosely or tightly coupled methods in standalone systems or distributed computing architecture. Developer and the user are confronted with tedious batch conversion tasks, import/export obstacles, and distributed resource access barriers imposed by heterogeneous processing and data environments in the loosely coupled of standalone systems. The tightly coupled of standalone systems as isolated islands are no longer appropriate for heterogeneous environmental disciplines due to the fact that they are still discipline specific. Due to the lack of interoperability, there is no communication in an interdisciplinary effort between GIS and environmental models. The motivations for adopting new methods are derived from the essential needs for supporting an efficient communication by promoting interoperability between GIS and modelers of environmental disciplines. In this paper after discussion about current methods of linking GIS and environmental models and their advantages and drawbacks, the distributed computing technology based on web services as well as standard protocols for deploying, discovering and invoking geo services are presented. Web Service Description Language (WSDL) as one of the fundumental protocolos has key role in deploying and discovering geo services. However it establishes syntactic interface and prevents the service requester from understanding the service semantics. A foundational ontology according to Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering (DOLCE) is designed which can help to exclude terminological and conceptual ambiguities due to unintended interpretations. Introduction The environmental models do have an obvious spatio-temporal nature. They are occurred in a part of spatial region like surface and subsurface water flow, soil erosion, impact assessment in the event of a chemical and/or oil spill or urban extend. Thus environmental modelers encourage using GIS for describing the models of how environment changes (e.g., models of erosion, flooding, vegetation growth and changes, urbanization). Currently different approaches have been used to link GIS with environmental models. According to Goodchild these approaches can be classified to full integrate (embedding), loose coupling and close coupling [Goodchild, 2001]. A variety of environmental disciplines have entered the modeling arena and a broad range of users belong to environmental disciplines are involved to exchange spatial data and operations.
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