Visualization of Systems of Systems Simulations: Density Plots and Trajectory Storyboarding

In the many cases where there are no solvable closed-form solutions for the dynamics of Systems of Systems (SOS), stochastic simulation may be the only practical solution to gaining insight into the system's interactions, processes and outcomes. Gaining this insight often requires producing many instantiations of the simulation, which, depending of the variability of the simulation, may produce huge amounts of data. Statistical techniques exist for summarizing the range of outcomes and identifying and analyzing various model states of interest. Often however, visualization techniques provide a more effective tool in gaining insight in the scope and result of the dynamic processes and interactions. The authors describe and present the use of Density Plotting (DP) and Trajectory Storyboarding (TS), visualization techniques for potentially extracting insights from SOS models.