9 – Simulation techniques

Publisher Summary Simulation is mostly used in architectural applications to predict the movement of people. However, it can be used in any situation involving random entities or variables, such as cars, aircraft, or outbreaks of fire. Simulation techniques have been used for lift siting, circulation analysis, canteen design, car-parking provision, airport terminal layout, supermarket design, and for solving various other diverse design problems. Simulation models are typically made up of separate but interacting networks, which often have looping and feedback characteristics. This can be made clearer by constructing a model for the specific example of a single checkout point. At the checkout, there are two interacting networks. The first of these is the customer network that is entered again and again by individual customers. The process of checking out might be divided roughly into the individual activities of queuing for service, waiting while the goods are totaled, and paying. The drawback to simulation might be that a lot of time has to be spent making observations to supply the basic information on the distribution of individual activity times.