Dstl simulate battles by means of stochastic evolution codes. These involve detailed simulation of many units in the battlefield. The Study Group was asked to investigate methods of 'aggregation' that would simulate a battle in simpler terms by aggregating the units together, so that simulations could be accelerated.

The Study Group proposed partitioning the battlefield into zones and treating the numbers of combatants in those zones as continuous variables obeying ordinary differential equations, possibly with stochastic terms. The parameters in those equations, and the stochastic terms, would need to be determined by running small, unit-to-unit, combats in the full simulator,which can be done much more quickly than simulating the whole battle.

Problem presented by
Rhys Williams and Simon Collander-Brown, Dstl

Study Group contributors
Tim Gould (University of Lancaster)
Poul Hjorth (Technical University of Denmark)
Maxim Zyskin (University of Bristol)