A multi-modal discrete-event simulation model for military deployment

Ankara : The Department of Industrial Engineering and the Institute of Engineering and Science of Bilkent University, 2009. ; Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Bilkent University, 2009. ; Includes bibliographical references leaves 132-136. ; This study introduces a logistics and transportation simulation as a tool that can be used to provide insights into potential outcomes of proposed military deployment plans. More specifically, we model a large‐scale real‐world military Deployment Planning Problem (DPP) that involves planning the movement of military units from their home bases to their final destinations using different transportation assets on a multimodal transportation network. We apply, for the first time, the Event Graph methodology and Listener Event Graph Object framework to create a discrete event simulation (DES) model of the DPP. We use and extend Simkit, an open‐source Java Application Programming Interface for creating DES models. The high‐resolution approach that we take in most part, allows us to estimate whether a given plan of deployment will go as intended, and determine prospective problem areas in a relatively short time compared to other existing simulations because of the absence of the need to use several models of differing resolutions in succession as often done in literature. For a typical deployment scenario for four battalions, run times are between 25 to 27 minutes for 60 runs of the model on a 1.6 GHz Pentium(R) M PC with 512 MB RAM. That is less than 30 seconds per run. To accurately incorporate real and detailed transportation network data into the simulation, we use GeoKIT, a state‐of‐the‐art, Java‐based Geographical Information System. The component‐based approach adopted in development of our simulation model enables us to easily integrate future additions to our model. The DES developed as part of this dissertation provides a test bed for currently existing deployment scenarios. While our DES model is not a panacea for all, it allows for testing the feasibility and sensitivity of ...