A Hybrid Model for Simulating Room Management Including Vacation Times

Abstract

Aim of this project as a part of the simulation system <more space> is to simulate the movement of students between lecture rooms, attending their regular curriculum to implement dynamic vacation times. Major outcome is the calculated time which they need to move from a starting point (for example an auditorium) to another location (arrival point). The program is realized in the object-oriented programming language Java and connected to Enterprise Dynamics. Modeling approaches are Cellular Automata (CA) and discrete simulation because the literature of this approach is widely spread, and after analysis of the project, the costbenefit calculation for this modeling was the best. One advantage especially shows that the CA can manage the dynamic behavior of the students finer and more efficient. This justifies the cost of planning and implementation of the corresponding interfaces. The goal of the project <more-space> is to develop software that shall support the planning phase of University2015-a project of the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) to renovate all university buildings and to improve the existing infrastructure and the inherent processes-by determining and evaluating the (spatial) resources required and introducing a model for the room management that can simulate the usage of resources to optimize the planning of the rooms and the future "real-life" usage. The dynamic model implemented in Enterprise Dynamics is the main model and simulation system including the data model, process descriptions and dynamic behaviour as using of resources depending on different system or environmental dependencies.