Regenerative systems: challenges and opportunities for modeling, simulation, and visualization

Regenerative systems are able to overcome significant perturbations, and maintain autonomously their functionality in dynamic and uncertain environments. More and more this ability of biological systems plays a role in designing technical systems, e.g., in sensor networks, as well. Important properties of regenerative systems are their dynamic structures and their operation on different spatial and temporal scales. Those propel the development of new modeling, simulation, and visualization methods. Among them, variants of the π-calculus formalism, a portfolio of Gillespie related spatial simulation algorithms, means for automatically configuring simulators, and the integrated visualization methods, that make use of innovative layouts and linked and coordinated views target challenges in analyzing biological regenerative systems. They provide a basis for analyzing regenerative systems in general by means of simulation.