Introduction

What is Movici?

Movici is a software suite for running various kinds of (event based) simulations. It focuses on time-based geospatial simulations. This means anything that has a physical location in the world and/or can change over time can be simulated using Movici. This is for example useful for simulations of different kinds of infrastructure domains such as roads and utilities but also for other types of assets in the world, such as buildings. Movici emphasises on the interdependencies between different domains so that the effects that one has on the other can be identified and quantified.

An example

Judy is responsible for investment planning for a road infrastructure maintainer. She wants to know how the upcoming planned housing investments affects her road network. She loads a digital representation of her road network (called a dataset) into Movici as well as the forecasted population density. Movici’s integrated Traffic Demand Model and Traffic Assignment model calculate the effect that the increased population has on her road network. She is able to pin-point a bottleneck in her network where road usage exceeds its capacity, leading to unacceptable congestion. She is able to plan her investments accordingly, determining that the affected roads need to be widened, and after loading her planned investments into Movici, validates that these indeed solve the congestion problems.

Meanwhile, Jason is head of logistics of a major sea port. He is in good contact with Judy and when she shares her road investment planning, he immediately runs his own simulation in Movici using this data. It turns out that one of his core transport routes will be unavailable for some time due to the planned road works. By connecting his own supply chain model, he is able to re-allocate demand to cargo trains to ensure that his customers receive their goods in time.

Why is it called Movici?

Movici is an acronym of Modeling and Visualization of Critical Infrastructures. Next to its Simulation Core, Movici provides a powerful data visualization tool for showing simulation results and using these visualizations to communicate the core findings to interested parties and stake holders.

How does it work?

Being able to simulate anything in the world is a daunting task. Instead of providing calculation models for every domain, Movici provides tools for connecting the different domain models that the user already has. By defining a common interface, different domains can interact with each other and interdependencies between these domains can be exposed.

Movici does this by defining two things:

• A data model: A common way that data is organised, so that domain calculation models know what to expect. To prevent confusion about what is called a “model”, this is called the “data format”. A collection of data concerning a specific domain is called a “Dataset”

• A calculation model interface: The way that calculation models (or just “Models”) are triggered and notified about changes in their domain and are expected to update their calculations

Models and Datasets can now be brought together in a Scenario. A Scenario is a description of which Models connect to which Datasets and Within a scenario, models and data are “brought to life” by introducing a timeline. On the timeline, some Models can initiate events (changes to the common world state), while others only react to these events/changes.