CS 1538 Introduction to Simulation

Programming Assignment 3

Online: Monday, November 16, 2009

What is due: All source and data files, all executable / .class files, a project write-up, a group experience write-up, individual experience write-ups, plus a completed README file.

How to submit: All files (including all write-ups) must be submitted electronically, to the CS 1538 submission site, in the proper directory. Since this will be a group project, I will create a new submission directory for each group. However, the basic submission procedure will be the same as for projects 1 and 2. For more submission details, see submit.html.

When it is due: All files submitted to the proper submission directory by Tuesday, December 8, 2009 by 11:59PM (the late due date is Friday, December 11 by 11:59PM). There is no late penalty for this assignment, but no submissions will be accepted after the late due date.

Overview:

Pitt is always trying to improve its campus for the students. One way of doing this is to close one or more streets to vehicular traffic so as to make the campus friendlier to pedestrians. Pitt actually considered this idea a few years ago, but ultimately decided against it.

You are going to resurrect this idea and will do a study / simulation to determine the impact of street closures on one or more of the following:

-- Traffic volume / congestion on other streets

-- Parking access / spaces

-- Local business volume

-- Pedestrian safety / ease of movement

Once you have run your simulation and processed the results, you should ultimately decide whether or not your original proposal was feasible / recommended or not.

Specifics:

This will be a group project. Groups will be randomly determined. Each group is required to do the following:

· Scout the Oakland area briefly, looking over the various streets on campus. Decide which street or streets you propose to close in order to improve the campus for pedestrians. Be prepared to briefly justify your decision from a "campus ideal" point of view.

· Do some simple analysis of the current situation in order to be able to determine the impact of the closing(s) later. This analysis should include recording events over a period of time and determining one or more distributions to fit the data. Some examples of this could be:

o Traffic on one or more streets / intersections (i.e. distribution of car arrivals)

o Arrivals / departures from various parking "lots". Note that a "parking lot" in this case could be spaces on the street.

o Arrivals / departures from various business establishments that you think may be impacted by the closings (ex: that are near to streets that will be closed)

o Pedestrian traffic across streets of interest

Note that vehicular and pedestrian traffic both vary greatly over the course of a given day. For your analysis, you may pick a specific time or use several different time periods. Be prepared to justify your choices.

· Determine the model for your "improved" campus, based on the closing of one or more streets, as well as other possible changes. This could include creating new parking lots (if feasible), converting other streets to one-way, or other changes that you find useful / necessary.

· Write a simulation in which you compare the "original" campus to your modified version. You must use a discrete event simulation using the same "next-event" time advance scheme that you used in Project 1. Think about the different types of events that occur and what you need to do in response to them. Also carefully consider the time period or periods over which the simulation will be "run" so that your results are meaningful. Finally, carefully consider the output data values of interest, since these will be used to judge your modifications. Some of these to consider might be average delay of cars at a traffic light, average delay of cars to find a parking spot, average number of students waiting to cross the street (and average delay to cross), average number of customers at a store, as well as many others.

· Write and submit an overall project write-up that includes a detailed development and / or discussion of each of the following:

a) How the input data was sampled and how the input distributions were determined. Where relevant, include any histograms and goodness-of-fit calculations to support your choices.

b) How you modeled the original system and your changes to it. Include here definitions / descriptions of the components of your original system (as described in Section 1.7 of the text), the modifications you chose to make and why you chose them (either intuitively or for some other reason, but they should be explained here based on your views PRIOR to obtaining any simulation results). Include here some informal verification and validation of the model.

c) The results you obtained in your simulation runs, and a comparison of the results between the original and modified systems. To analyze these results properly, you should use some statistical analysis of those results. Consult Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 of the Banks text for analysis measures that you should use.

d) Conclusions about how your modifications affected the system, and whether or not your proposed changes are feasible / recommended. Note that this answer could be somewhat ambiguous, but you should justify your opinions thoroughly, based on your results from c) and on any other costs / issues related to the modifications.

e) Comments about how the model / simulation could be improved with additional time / resources.

Note that this write-up should be well-written and substantial, and it will count for a significant part of each group's overall grade. You may elect one person in the group to do the write-up or it can be a joint effort – it is up to each group to decide.

· Write and submit a group experience write-up. This write-up should include the following:

a) Specific, detailed assignments of duties within the group

b) Meeting and progress reports throughout the project duration. This could be in a journal or "minutes" format

c) Details of any problems / issues faced during the development and how they were resolved.

· Write and submit individual experience write-ups for each member of the group. These write-ups must be written individually and should NOT be shared with the rest of the group. In these write-ups you should reflect on your personal duties and experiences within the group. Include here what you were assigned to do and how well you think you were able to do it. Also indicate how you think your group as a whole worked together and what could be done to improve it in a future project.

Grading:

This project is worth 100 total points (normalizing to 10 overall grade points) for each student. Group scores will be out of 90 points and will be the same for all students in each group. The remaining 10 points will be based on the individual experience write-ups. All individual write-ups within a group will be taken into account when assigning the individual write-up scores for each student.

Notes:

· A great deal of this project is left unspecified, giving you a lot of flexibility in how you approach both the development of the simulation and the analysis of and conclusions from the results. However, you must be able to defend all of your decisions in your report, to the best of your ability. Clearly, you have a limited amount of time to do this and you are still learning some of the necessary tools. This will be taken into account during the grading of your project. For example, if you cannot find a set of distributions that exactly match your sample input, use something that comes close and explain how the input data may be improved in your write-up.

· Since collection of data will be a difficult and time-consuming part of the project, I will allow all groups to work together on this part of the project (if you wish). However, once the raw data has been collected, each group must determine its own distributions (and justifications) and do the rest of the project on its own.