Visualizing Coercible Simulations

The labor intensive aspects of simulation development and maintenance make exploration of reuse essential. However, reuse is generally difficult to achieve in practice due to inflexible assumptions and changing requirements. This p,per discusses a technology for simulation reuse called COERCE and the visualization tools that this technology requires. COERCE addresses techniques to make simulations more flexible (coercibility) and the process of transforming a simulation to meet new objectives (coercion). We address the following question: Given that COERCE is a semi-automated technology, what visualization capabilities are necessary to support it? We address this question empirically by studying the role of visualization in the construction of a new coercible simulation and in the coercion of an existing example simulation. Based on this study, we propose a set of requirements for any visualization toolkit meant to support COERCE.