A Data Assimilation Framework for Discrete Event Simulations

Discrete event simulation (DES) is traditionally used as an offline tool to help users to carry out analysis for complex systems. As real-time sensor data become more and more available, there is increasing interest of assimilating real-time data into DES to achieve on-line simulation to support real-time decision making. This article presents a data assimilation framework that works with DES models. Solutions are proposed to address unique challenges associated with data assimilation for DES. A tutorial example of discrete event road traffic simulation is developed to demonstrate the data assimilation framework as well as principles of data assimilation in general. This article makes contributions to the DES community by presenting a data assimilation framework for DES and a concrete tutorial example that helps readers to grasp the details of data assimilation for DES.