Hydra: a service oriented architecture for scientific simulation integration

One of the current major challenges in scientific modeling and simulation, in particular in the infrastructure-analysis community, is the development of techniques for efficiently and automatically coupling disparate tools that exist in separate locations on different platforms, implemented in a variety of languages and designed to be standalone. Recent advances in web-based platforms for integrating systems such as service-oriented architecture (SOA) provide an opportunity to address these challenges in a systematic fashion. This paper describes Hydra, an integrating architecture for infrastructure modeling and simulation that defines geography-based schemas that, when used to wrap existing tools as web services, allow for seamless interoperability. While conducting new studies in Hydra, existing users of these tools increase their analysis capabilities by assessing how the simulation results of one tool impact the behavior of another tool and can automate existing ad hoc processes and work flows for highly complex scenarios.