Ask HN: Traffic/Parking Lot Simulation? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Traffic/Parking Lot Simulation?

5 pointsjforjuancho4 comments

Greetings,

Just wondering if anyone has any pointers on how to get started in things like parking lot simulation, traffic simulation and public transit simulation?

Thanks!

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Have a look at the projects by https://sharedstreets.io/ Some of it is open source, e.g. https://github.com/sharedstreets/speed-prediction

Thanks

I'm far from an expert, but I can share a thought or two. I think all of the you examples you cited would fall into the overall umbrella of "discrete event simulation"[1]. This would be discrete as opposed to something like fluid dynamics or weather modeling, which would be closer to "continuous simulation"[6].

Anyway, within the realm of discrete event simulation, there are a lot of different techniques and tools. You can always code up a simulation using any standard programming language: your Java, Python, C++, Go, etc. But there are also purpose built tools and libraries for this as well. As you might expect, a lot of tools[2] in this space are F/OSS.

Not on that list, but also a possible option, is NetLogo[3]. It's advertised as a "Multi-agent system" simulation environment, but can absolutely be used for various kinds of DES. Once nice thing about NetLogo is that it's very popular and has a vibrant community, and a lot of pre-existing models you can use to learn from, or as a base for your own models.

If you're a Python person, Simpy[4] is very popular as well.

Here's a super simple simulation[5] involving a traffic light, using Simpy.

Also, a technique that might not be specifically useful in your domain, but which is widely used for many kinds of simulation, and which is probably worth knowing about, is Monte Carlo simulation[7].

See also: the Wikipedia page[8] on "traffic simulation".

You may also find that this starts to overlap some with "queuing theory"[9] in places.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete-event_simulation

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_discrete_event_simulat...

[3]: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/index.shtml

[4]: https://simpy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[5]: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/basics-of-discrete-event-simul...

[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_simulation

[7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method

[8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_simulation

[9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queueing_theory

Thanks, this will keep me busy for a good couple of weekends :D!

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