Tools for tailoring the synthetic natural environment

On-demand tailoring of environmental data is an important objective of the Joint Simulation System (JSIMS) and has always been a desirable tool in the Modeling and Simulation (M&S) community. Tailoring tools that modify environmental data are required to make detailed adjustments to a scenario and to steer the training experience at run-time to meet specific goals. The objective of the JSIMS Environmental Tailoring Services (JETS) project is to develop techniques and guidance for this type of on-demand tailoring. In the recent past, changes made to a scenario were primarily visual and had little impact on the simulations. In the future, JSIMS envisions SNE control that provides the ability to affect run-time changes to a scenario. Because simulations and their operators need data and products that are consistent and derived from a common SNE, any tools used to edit the Synthetic Natural Environment (SNE) should assure an appropriate level of physical consistency across all five dimensions (time, 3-D space, and variable). A basic JETS goal is to develop algorithms that will take changes to the SNE and consistently reflect those changes through the rest of the SNE data at an appropriate level of scientific validity. Although JETS tools have been developed for alteration of atmospheric data, the concepts can be applied to other domains such as the ocean and space.

Tools which allow for scientifically valid adjustments to the Synthetic Natural Environment will assist the M&S community in two basic ways. First, editing tools will allow for the adjustment of the SNE during the construction of the scenario (pre-exercise). This can be very useful if the environmental data gathered according to some set of scenario requirements does not exactly meet those requirements. JETS tailoring algorithms can then be used to modify a small portion of the SNE to meet a specific goal, blend those changes in space and time, and leave the remaining database unchanged. Second, JETS tailoring tools can provide for short-notice changes to the SNE during the exercise itself (run-time). This is more of a challenge in that run-time editing requires not only physical consistency, but also the ability to operate the tool efficiently across a distributed simulation.

TASC, under the sponsorship of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA), has developed tailoring algorithms which can be used in scenario construction or during run-time. The algorithms account for physical relationships between atmospheric variables. In addition, constraint analysis is used to provide guidance to the user as to what range of edits are physically allowable. The algorithms have been tested on various sensor models to demonstrate the importance of editing an SNE in a physically realistic manner.