In the scenario of a natural catastrophe or a terrorist attack, a
large number of self-organizing, low-cost sensor devices can be
deployed over the affected area. Each device equipped with its own
power source, sensor, processing unit and low-power radio, can be
imbued with the intelligence to seek out its neighbours and join in a
wireless network spanning the geographic domain. The sensed quantities
can then be forwarded to collections points, where the information is
aggregated and presented to emergency response teams.  We are
developing a high-performance framework for simulation of large-scale
wireless sensor networks. This model is comprised of sub-models of the
environment being sensed (e.g. terrain, hazard propagation, etc.), the
radio environment, and the actual source code of ad-hoc networking
protocols.