Content area
Abstract
Although simulation is one of the most innovative and cost-effective tools for modeling and analyzing a system, simulation studies often fail to provide any useful results. One reason is attributed to the fact that model formulation depends on the skills of the analyst and her domain knowledge of the system under study. The objective of this research is to develop a conceptual modeling framework to assist a simulation analyst in specifying components for studying physical security systems. By doing so it is expected to make simulation less modeler dependent. The described work resulted in development of a layered, modeling language independent framework with a total of 15 templates built on top of 14 primitives having 119 parameters. The modeling framework has been programmed as an internet-based web application and is simulation language independent. It allows for a top-down or bottom-up approach in developing the conceptual model. The usefulness of the framework is evaluated empirically through 45 participants having undergraduate and graduate level background in Industrial Engineering. It was found that conceptual models developed by the participants failed to identify at least 82% of the parameters when compared to the conceptual models developed using the web application of the developed framework.
