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Over the past few months the AnyLogic North America team have been busy attending many customer events and conferences and spreading the good word about AnyLogic. AnyLogic North America attended the Annual INFORMS conference in Minneapolis, MN at the beginning of October. We maintained a high visibility level through two workshops (one workalong, and one demonstration) and our state-of-the-art booth. Indeed, our booth received very complimentary remarks from several of the other vendors for its elegance and messaging.

To continue on the topic of pedestrian modeling: recently, I heard the news that the new terminal being built in the St. Petersburg airport will be tested using a free labor force, or in other words, volunteers. Actually, the volunteers will test the terminal’s operations and on-ground facilities by acting like passengers. It was interesting to find that the London Heathrow and Dubai airports are using this practice right now too. Here in St. Pete, they gathered more than 5,000 volunteers, to come to the terminal and walk around, jostle to check-in desks, race up the down-moving escalators, get bored in queues to passport controls, etc. I suspect that the volunteers will be watched by engineers, who will be counting the number of injuries per minute. That’s how airport authorities are going to see if everything is OK with the terminal.

How can an overpopulated city fight traffic congestion? Examples from many current metropolitan areas show that, apart from subways and buses, city railways can greatly improve traffic situations. Probably the most famous city rail system is the S-Bahn in Germany. In North America, one of the more well-known examples is the BeltLine in Atlanta, Georgia.

This September the simulation society in UK enjoyed two meaningful events – OR55 Annual Conference and 8th EUROSIM Congress. The first one is more attended by practitioners and the second one is a more academic event. At both conferences people were very excited about AnyLogic 7, although there were concerns by the move towards a wizard based system and how it might damage the 'power' of AnyLogic. We are keen to assure you that it is a baseless fear! Wizards are aimed to facilitate the learning curve for those who are new to the software. If you do not need Wizard’s assistance, you can easily skip this option and continue creating models via regular interface.

AnyLogic North America had another successful training. In San Jose, over a dozen students representing commercial interests from marketing and epidemiology to semiconductor manufacturing and behavioral modeling, learned how to apply AnyLogic’s unique multimethod modeling capability to their business problems. Users of all three modeling methods – System Dynamics, Discrete Event, and Agent Based modeling – were represented. Many interesting discussions occurred regarding when to use which method, and the networking among the students yielded excellent benefits for both students and ALNA.

Take part in Simulation Modeling Student Competition and win an iPad!

In the chapter "Agent based modeling. Technology overview", we present an overview of the technologies and techniques used in agent based modeling. Agent based models are very diverse in architecture, behavior types, number of agents, space types and so on. Other modeling methods (discrete event and system dynamics) are often used inside and outside agents. Although there is no special or standard language for agent based modeling, there are “design patterns” that are common to many agent based models. The chapter includes example models described in the step-by-step manner: Air Defense System, Wildfire (featuring combined discrete-continuous space), and also some discrete space classics: Schelling Segregation and Conway’s Game of Life.

Many people, who are interested in sales forecasting, are familiar with the book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. The abstract of the book states: “Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, we consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable—making us predictably irrational.” The irrationality of human decisions is the basis of behavioral economics. Predictably Irrational, and many other books, give many examples which argue the idea of consumer rationality. Businesses are irrational too, as they are guided by human beings.