A Cloud-based Development Environment using HLA and Kubernetes for the Co-simulation of a Corporate Electric Vehicle Fleet

Decision makers in modern enterprises need to assess so-called "what-if" scenarios and select the best of breed among the available alternatives. Although simulation plays a pivotal role in niche cases, it is an undervalued tool in the broader enterprise context. Its proliferation has not kept up with recent technological advances such as big data, cloud computing, graphics processing units clusters, and cross-layer enterprise integration. Based on such new developments, new capabilities can be realized that go beyond single-purpose simulations, and are an excellent fit for studying heterogeneous, independently developed System-of-Systems (SoS), in a multitude of scenarios in complex and dynamic enterprise environments. Co-simulation efforts can provide new insights on the enterprise operations including compelling visualizations of possible simulated alternatives, thereby assisting decision makers in their strategy selection. To move beyond niche applications, however, simulated systems need to integrate in real-time, a continually increasing amount of data (both real and simulated), stemming from various domains and their systems. This work presents a way to achieve such distributed simulations in modern enterprise environments, based on HighLevel Architecture (HLA), as well as their coordination via the Run-Time Infrastructure (RTI). In an example scenario featuring a co-simulation of a corporate electric vehicle fleet, it is shown how various software subsystems interact to enable business users to visually investigate scenarios, as well as how such a system can be deployed and operated within a modern enterprise IT landscape.