Investigating a Science Gateway for an Agent-Based Simulation Application Using REPAST

Abstract

The benefits of using e-Infrastructure environments, such as cloud, grid, and high performance computing, for performing scientific experiments could be quite significant. In particular, modeling and simulation, which can serve as a key decision making and system analysis tool, could benefit immensely from such environments ranging from issues of how a community of practice could access a simulation to how it could be run quickly. However, the access and use of these e-Infrastructure environments may present a completely different set of challenges, most especially for non-ICT users. Science Gateways (SG), which are digital interfaces to advanced technologies, can be used to overcome the challenges of running many simulations on e- Infrastructures in a reasonable amount of time. In this work, we developed a SG, based on the Liferay portal framework and the Catania grid and cloud engine. We show how an Agent- Based infection simulation, which has been implemented using the Recursive Porous Agent Simulation Toolkit (REPAST) Simphony, can be ported to a Science Gateway and deployed on distributed computing infrastructures. This demonstration illustrates how this technology can be used easily to allow multiple users across the world to access a simulation and to execute their applications in an e-Infrastructures environment.