Research Article
Semantics for structured systems modelling and simulation
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/ICST.SIMUTOOLS2010.8631, author={Matthew Collinson and Brian Monahan and David Pym}, title={Semantics for structured systems modelling and simulation}, proceedings={3rd International ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques}, publisher={ICST}, proceedings_a={SIMUTOOLS}, year={2010}, month={5}, keywords={Simulation modelling semantics process calculus logic}, doi={10.4108/ICST.SIMUTOOLS2010.8631} }- Matthew Collinson
Brian Monahan
David Pym
Year: 2010
Semantics for structured systems modelling and simulation
SIMUTOOLS
ICST
DOI: 10.4108/ICST.SIMUTOOLS2010.8631
Abstract
Simulation modelling is an important tool for exploring and reasoning about complex systems. Many supporting languages are available. Commonly occurring features of these languages are constructs capturing concepts such as process, resource, and location. We describe a mathematical framework that supports a modelling idiom based on these core concepts, and which adopts stochastic methods for representing the environments within which systems exist. We explain how this framework can be used to give a semantics to a simulation modelling language, Core Gnosis, that includes basic constructs for process, resource, and location. We include a brief discussion of a logic for reasoning about models that is compositional with respect to their structure. Our mathematical analysis of systems in terms of process, resource, location, and stochastic environment, together with a language that captures these concepts quite directly, yields an efficient and robust modelling framework within which natural mathematical reasoning about systems is captured.
