A service-based framework for building and executing epidemic simulation applications in the cloud

The cloud has emerged as an attractive platform for resource-intensive scientific applications, such as epidemic simulators. However, building and executing such applications in the cloud presents multiple challenges, including exploiting elasticity, handling failures, and simplifying multi-cloud deployment. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a novel service-based framework called DiFFuSE that enables simulation applications with a bag-of-tasks structure to fully exploit cloud platforms. This paper describes how the framework is applied to restructure two legacy applications, simulating the spread of bovine viral diarrhea virus and Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis, into elastic cloud-native applications. Experimental results show that the framework enhances application performance and allows exploring different cost-performance trade-offs while supporting automatic failure handling and elastic resource acquisition from multiple clouds.