Article ID: | iaor20164910 |
Volume: | 36 |
Issue: | 10 |
Start Page Number: | 1844 |
End Page Number: | 1854 |
Publication Date: | Oct 2016 |
Journal: | Risk Analysis |
Authors: | Guikema Seth D, Reilly Allison C, Staid Andrea, Gao Michael |
Keywords: | risk, performance, computational analysis: parallel computers |
Simulation models are widely used in risk analysis to study the effects of uncertainties on outcomes of interest in complex problems. Often, these models are computationally complex and time consuming to run. This latter point may be at odds with time‐sensitive evaluations or may limit the number of parameters that are considered. In this article, we give an introductory tutorial focused on parallelizing simulation code to better leverage modern computing hardware, enabling risk analysts to better utilize simulation‐based methods for quantifying uncertainty in practice. This article is aimed primarily at risk analysts who use simulation methods but do not yet utilize parallelization to decrease the computational burden of these models. The discussion is focused on conceptual aspects of embarrassingly parallel computer code and software considerations. Two complementary examples are shown using the languages MATLAB and R. A brief discussion of hardware considerations is located in the Appendix.