Gun violence and the reckless use of firearms have been a pervasive and growing problem in the United States, especially in low-income communities and communities of underrepresented minorities. The problem has only become exacerbated by increasingly permissive gun control laws, easy access to firearms, and an increasing mistrust of law enforcement that often inhibits reporting by the community.

Ubiquitous access to mobile and web technologies enables the public to share valuable information about their surroundings anywhere and anytime. For example, during an emergency or crisis people report needs from affected areas via social media as an alternative to the traditional 911 calls. This can be valuable information for a range of emergency service officials. However, the utilization of this data poses several computational challenges as it is generated in real time, is heterogeneous, highly unstructured, redundant, and sometimes unreliable.

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are composed of a wide range of networked physical, computational, and human/organization components. These systems are highly complex as they have many different heterogeneous components, such as physical, computational, and human. Simulation-based evaluation of the behavior of CPS is complex, as it involves multiple, heterogeneous, interacting domains. Each simulation domain has sophisticated tools, but their integration into a coherent framework is a difficult, time-consuming, labor-intensive, and error-prone task.