Modelling and simulating the traffic of heavily used but secure environments such as seaports and airports are of increasing importance. Errors made when simulating these environments can have long standing economic, social and environmental implications. This article discusses issues and problems that may arise when designing a simulation strategy. Data for the Port is presented, methods for lightweight vehicle assessment that can be used to calibrate and validate simulations are also discussed along with a diagnosis of overcalibration issues. We show that decisions about where the intelligence lies in a system has important repercussions for the reliability of system statistics. Finally, conclusions are drawn about how microsimulations can be moved forward as a robust planning tool for the 21st century.
a b s t r a c tModelling and simulating the traffic of heavily used but secure environments such as seaports and airports are of increasing importance. Errors made when simulating these environments can have long standing economic, social and environmental implications. This article discusses issues and problems that may arise when designing a simulation strategy. Data for the Port is presented, methods for lightweight vehicle assessment that can be used to calibrate and validate simulations are also discussed along with a diagnosis of overcalibration issues. We show that decisions about where the intelligence lies in a system has important repercussions for the reliability of system statistics. Finally, conclusions are drawn about how microsimulations can be moved forward as a robust planning tool for the 21st century.
When planning to change operations at ports there are two key stake holders with very different interests involved in the decision making processes. Port operators are attentive to their standards, a smooth service flow and economic viability while border agencies are concerned about national security. The time taken for security checks often interferes with the compliance to service standards that port operators would like to achieve.Decision support tools as for example Cost-Benefit Analysis or Multi Criteria Analysis are useful helpers to better understand the impact of changes to a system. They allow investigating future scenarios and helping to find solutions that are acceptable for all parties involved in port operations.In this paper we evaluate two different modelling methods, namely scenario analysis and discrete event simulation. These are useful for driving the decision support tools (i.e. they provide the inputs the decision support tools require). Our aims are, on the one hand, to guide the reader through the modelling processes and, on the other hand, to demonstrate what kind of decision support information one can obtain from the different modelling methods presented.
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