International collaborations in web-based simulation: A focus on experimental design and optimization

This paper summarizes several years of research conducted by the authors to investigate the use of the world-wide web in conducting large-scale simulation studies. The initial efforts, at Tilburg University in 1999, were directed toward accessing several computer processors via the web and assigning each processor a portion of the simulation workload in a parallel replications simulation format. This early work utilized models coded in the Java-based Silk simulation language. By 2001, this research had extended the web-based simulation approach to more widely used simulation languages such as Arena. The present state of this research is that large-scale simulation studies can be conducted on a set of computers, accessed through the web, in a fraction of the time needed using a single processor.