A GIS-enabled Distributed Simulation Framework for Natural Resource Management

A distributed simulation framework is presented to enable natural resource managers to take advantage of both Geographic Information System (GIS) functionality and computationally intensive ecological modeling. Based on one of the newest products from a major vendor of GIS software (ESRI’s ArcGIS engine), a user interface was developed to manipulate and visualize digital maps and spatially explicit simulation results. An objective is to allow access to computationally intensive simulations while utilizing an interface system with which natural resource managers have extensive prior experience. Distributed communication services were also developed to support spatially explicit ecological modeling on both local and remote computational platforms. Such a capability is important for natural resource agencies which may have little in-house capacity for extensive computation and could greatly benefit from the use of a computing grid. To provide examples of the practical application of such a system, we present two ecological modeling cases. These models are components of a major ecological multimodel, the Across Trophic Level System Simulation (ATLSS), developed for application to one of the world’s largest ecological restoration projects, in the Everglades of South Florida. The first example is a sequential model to show the working procedure for short-time simulations on a single platform. The second example is a parallel model to demonstrate the procedure for long-time simulations on remote high performance computational platforms. In both cases, we illustrate how the framework provides user access to computationally intensive dynamic, spatially-explicit simulations, enhancing the capabilities available through a stand-alone GIS, while retaining many of the benefits of a GIS.