Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Matsim

A previous post introduced the notion of microsimulation and how it can be integrated with ABM. As a follow on to this post, I would like to draw ones attention to such an application. That of MATSim (Multi Agent Traffic Simulation),n open source java application which links diverse datasets such as networks (e.g. roads and public transport networks), population data (e.g. census data and commuter matrices) and demand (places of work, leisure facilities, opening hours) and uses this information to simulated a range of issues. From that of road pricing schemes, location based services, city evacuation and social networks.

Basically MATSim provides a toolbox to implement large-scale agent-based transport simulations. The toolbox consists of several modules which can be combined or used in stand-alone applications. Currently, MATSim offers a toolbox for demand-modelling, mobility-simulation, re-planning, a controller to iteratively run simulations as well as methods to analyze the output generated by the modules.

MATSim is currently being developed by two groups: Transport Planning at the Institute for Transport Planning and Systems (IVT), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and the Transport Systems Planning and Transport Telematics at the Institute for Land and Sea Transport Systems, Technische Universität Berlin.

MATSim can be download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/matsim while further information and links about MATSim can be found on the Project website.

An alternative to MATSim is TRANSIMS, and Balmer, et al. 2005 provide a comparison of MAtSIM with TRANSIMS.


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