Development of an Enterprise Architecture Simulator based on a 3d gaming engine

Industrial information and control systems(ICS) at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) does research and teaches within the field of Enterprise Architecture. One purpose of the research is the development of a software tool to visualize and analyze the Enterprise Architecture that can be found at different companies. Within the last years a Java-based application the Enterprise Architecture Analysis Tool (EAT) has been implemented that has abilities to perform analysis by applying a research method that has been developed at ICS as well. According to this method this tool provides support for two subtasks. At first a meta-model is created, that describes constructs which can be used to model objects of investigation within Enterprise Architecture (e.g. the analysis of Interoperability). In the second step a model complying with the meta-model is constructed, based on the current Enterprise Architecture scenario or possible future configurations, which is then analyzed. This tool in its current version is available at http://www.ics.kth.se/eat.

In order to provide a more comprehensible analysis plus a more intuitive user interface the tool should be extended with a simulation component. This master thesis should examine in what way it is possible to link the existing tool and its modeling and evaluation functionalities with a gaming engine. This master thesis aims to answer the question how can Enterprise Architecture be simulated and how could a heterogeneous tool look like? Therefore the Unreal Development Kit and the underlying Unreal Engine 3 should be explored and an implementation should be performed.
For this master thesis a strong background in Java programming including comprehensive knowledge of object oriented programming and design patterns is mandatory. Experiences with the UnrealScript programming language and the Unreal Engine (version 3.0 or previous versions) are preferable, knowledge in other gaming engines would be a benefit as well. Also some knowledge in 3D graphic tools is required (3Ds MAX, Blender, or similar).