Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference S. Jain, R.R. Creasey, J. Himmelspach, K.P. White, and M. Fu, eds. ARCHITECTURE FOR INTEGRATED MODELING, SIMULATION AND VISUALIZATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS USING GIS AND CELL-DEVS Mariano Zapatero Gabriel Wainer Rodrigo Castro Maysoun Houssein Departamento de Computación FCEN - Universidad de Buenos Aires. Ciudad Universitaria, Pabellón I. (1428) Buenos Aires. ARGENTINA Dept. of Systems and Computer Engineering Carleton University. Centre of Visualization and Simulation (V-Sim). 1125 Colonel By Dr. Ottawa, ON. CANADA ABSTRACT Online Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and their associated data visualization technologies are playing an increasingly important role in providing updated information for environmental models. The analysis of simulation results are often benefited from their georeferenced animated visualization. We present an architectural web-based integration of the DCD++ distributed modeling and simulation frame- work as the centerpiece of a GIS-based scientific workflow to study environmental phenomena. We demonstrate an end-to-end application of the proposed architecture by means of a wildfire spreading model, backed by online updates of different parameters affecting the environmental system under study. Google Earth and GRASS are the two GIS systems selected to highlight the flexibility of the integrated system. 1 INTRODUCTION Many applications currently make use of modeling and simulation techniques for environmental applica- tions. Many of them rely on geographic data such as terrain elevation, land use, climate, etc. There is a variety of specialized software for handling this type of data, known as Geographical Information Sys- tems (GIS), which allow manipulating georeferenced information and performing different operations with maps. GIS are usually organized in multiple layers of data, and they are currently an indispensable tool for the scientific analysis of regional characteristics, in particular in the field of environmental appli- cations. These systems can centralize all the environmental data available and make it accessible in sever- al forms such as image maps, digital maps or raw data files. Therefore, the simulations of processes that use environmental data as inputs can be very benefited if the data provided comes directly from an updated GIS, making the integration between GIS and the simu- lator a goal to be achieved. Although many GIS already contain embedded simulation capabilities, the reduced sets of available models are closed and the power of the simulator is constrained by the host computers (usually a PC) without capabilities for scaling up. On the other hand, simulators that run separated from GIS tools provide precise results but they fall short in expressing them into the appropriate georeferenced context. This limitation can be overcome by porting raw simulation results into the corresponding georeferenced maps. In this way, many sources of information can be associated, even if they do not come from the simulation model, providing a much more powerful analysis experience. 997 978-1-4577-2109-0/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE