Simulation Output and Measures of Effectiveness

 

The output provided by MITSIM allows calculation of a rich set of measures of effectiveness (MOE) useful for evaluation of a wide range of traffic management systems. Typical simulation output includes:

(i)

Vehicle specific information, such as total travel time, distance traveled, and average speed, reported when vehicles reach their destination nodes;

(ii)

Readings from traffic sensors, such as traffic counts, occupancy, speeds, point to point travel times, and vehicle classification, reported at either a fixed frequency or upon recording by the sensor;

(iii)

Segment specific traffic data such as density, average speed, and travel times, reported at a fixed frequency or when simulation is completed;

(iv)

Time-dependent link travel times and vehicle counts, reported at the end of the simulation; and

(v)

Graphical display of the vehicle movements, segment specific traffic data (e.g. average density and speed), and sensor measurements (e.g. counts, average flows, speeds and occupancies).

By collecting disaggregate data on vehicle movements and applying appropriate models, MOEs concerning fuel consumption, emissions, safety, etc. can also be obtained.

Since MITSIM is a stochastic simulation model, simulation runs using identical input may produce different outcomes. To obtain statistically significant evaluation results, multiple simulation runs should be conducted for each evaluation under a given scenario. Information of interest is extracted and averaged from the output of individual simulation runs.