Visual Creation and Simulation of Spatial Processes with Simpro-scene

Simpro-scene is a creative environment that gives specialists from any industry the ability to create working visual models of complex spatial processes in both 2D and 3D space. It allows users to quickly visualize dynamic geospatial data. No programming skills are required.

Simpro-scene analyzes scenarios according to sets of system rules using an inference engine. Simpro-scene is cross-platform, free, open source, and integrates various open source libraries from artificial intelligence and GIS. The core of Simpro-scene is the ontology editor Protege, an environment for building intelligent systems. Protege develops block diagrams for the scenarios and datasets fed into Simpro-scene. It is written in Clojure, and the client is written in ClojureScript and works in the browser. Simpro-scene also makes use of OpenMap GIS library, the Rete4frames systems shell, and numerous other open libraries.

Simpro-scene uses Cesium for 3D visualization. Currently, this typically involves showing the observer’s view of the surrounding world from a specified side of a moving object, such as a train, that is a part of a complex spatial process. A special web server for Cesium works in Protege and passes the necessary data to the Cesium client at its request.

For example, Glacier Express uses Simpro-scene to visualize a train route through the mountains:

The Sailing Expert System uses Simpro-scene to model a yacht race from multiple perspectives and see each ship’s course, speed, and altitude: