A Flexible Simulation Architecture for Pandemic Influenza Simulation

Simulation is an important resource for studying the dynamics of pandemic influenza and predicting the potential impact of interventions. However, there are several challenges for the design of such simulator architectures. Specifically, it is difficult to develop simulators that combine flexibility with run-time performance. This tradeoff is problematic in the pandemic-response setting because it makes it challenging to extend and adapt simulators for ongoing situations where rapid results are indispensable. Simulation architectures based on aspect-oriented programming can model specific concerns of the simulator and can allow developers to rapidly extend the simulator in new ways without sacrificing run-time performance. It is possible to use such aspects in conjunction with separate simulation models, which define community, disease, and intervention properties. The implication of this research for pandemic response is that aspects can add a novel layer of flexibility to simulation environments, which enables modelers to extend the simulator run-time component to new requirements that go beyond the original modeling framework.