Aptima Contributes DDD Team-based Simulator to Open-Source Community

DDD, a simulation environment designed for team-based scenarios, such as military and first-responder exercises, has been contributed by its developer Aptima, Inc., to the open- source software community, where it’s now available for free on GitHub.

DDD, which stands for the “distributed dynamic decision-making” environment, was developed by Aptima as a platform to research the effectiveness of multi-participant teams, particularly the communications and collaboration in scenarios such as air battle operations, joint task force commands, and disaster response. Using DDD, researchers can simulate an earthquake scenario, for example, in order to test different emergency management protocols, first-responder team structures, and communication channels.

To create scenarios that represent the physical world with a birds-eye top-down view, DDD’s Visual Scenario Generator™ lets users flexibly set up scenarios without programming. Global users can script scenarios as varied as military conflicts to industrial accidents to natural disasters, specifying the environment or terrain, human roles, communications networks, and command chains, and the types of vehicles or aircraft involved. DDD supports voice and chat between players, as well as whiteboarding. Game assets can be assigned with attributes and capabilities, such as F-16s and helicopters, their armaments, range and speed.

Wizard-like screens and drop-down menus walk users through set up of maps, assets, networks, sensors and other resources. DDD generates scenarios in XML files, and includes full APIs for use with other military simulators, and external programs to add AI agents or their own displays.

“DDD is an ideal test bed for today’s complex decision-making world,” said Daniel Serfaty, CEO and Principal Founder of Aptima, Inc. “We hope the academic and other communities will use this tool to gain and share knowledge of individual and team performance across different domains.”

DDD’s source code, documentation and license for free use are available for download on GitHub, the world’s largest repository for open-source software, at the following link: https://github.com/aptima/ddd