Education

Current Research

Simul8 is used to carry out a variety of research throughout the world. Below you will find some brief information on some of the current research activity.

To apply for a free Simul8 license as part of your research, please complete our form here.

Katherine Penny - University of Southampton, Advised by: Sally Brailsford

This PhD project looks at the use of telecare to help meet the social care needs of people with dementia; enabling people to remain within their own homes for longer and out of long term institutional care. Ultimately this project will lead to the development of a discrete event simulation (DES) model which will be used to examine the facilitating and obstructive factors that influence telecare uptake for people with dementia.

For more see their research web site.

Vusal Babashov - Tefler School of Management, University of Ottawa, Advised by: Jonathan Patrick

Modeling cancer treatment process for patients at the Ottawa Cancer Center, with the goal to determine bottlenecks, reduce wait times and increase process efficiency. The DES model will include the key radiation treatment planning steps as well as hospital resources such as radiation oncologists, linear accelerators, etc.

Christina Phillips - Bangor University, Advised by: Kostas Nikolopoulos

I am using human focused analytics to solve issues in production planning and control enabling lean in an uncertain environment. Simul8 will be used as part of a participative modeling exercise to smooth production at the point of combination and test. I work in Siemens Healthcare under an NDA.

For more see their research web site.

Christina Saville - University of Southampton, Advised by: Honora Smith

Mathematical modelling to improve pathways to breast cancer diagnosis. The study's purpose is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a breast cancer diagnostic clinic. Objective 1 is to assess whether general practitioner [GP] referral notes can be used to predict both a patients risk level and which diagnostic tests the patient requires. This will involve using data mining techniques to make predictions. Objective 2 is to recommend strategies to improve clinic efficiency to both meet the national target for GP appointment to referral time, and to reduce on-the-day waiting times. In this phase, samples of waiting and process times will be collected. Then a simulation model will be built allowing different scenarios to be investigated. Objective 3 is to provide insights into what factors affect which hospital a GP surgery refers their patients to for breast cancer diagnostic services.

Aaron Boddy - Liverpool John Moores University, Advised by: William Hurst

To address the lack of information about the rise in cyber-attacks on medical devices, this research investigates the growing concern of cyber-security for the critical health care infrastructure. The project will examine the recent increase in attacks on the NHS network in particular; and visualise real-world network data in order to better understand cyber-attacks on healthcare networks Specifically, the central aim of the research is to explore the use of visualisation techniques to address the need for enhanced cyber-security measures on healthcare devices. During the research, we plan to investigate how medical devices access the healthcare system and what cyber-security measures are in place. These devices are a known risk for the NHS network. We will also identify how pattern recognition techniques can be used to analyse big data sets and find trends in patterns for cyber-attack visualisation purposes within the network.

As such, the aim of this project is to address the cyber-vulnerabilities of medical devices, particularly within the NHS critical infrastructure network. The proposed research project will develop a system which analyses the data sets from various medical devices and employs data analysis and visualisation techniques to identify threats and vulnerabilities within healthcare networks.

Specifically, the following aims for the proposed system are considered: 1. Develop a system which analyses patterns and trends of data within healthcare networks. 2. Employ the system to ascertain likely points of entry for attackers. 3. Detecting vulnerabilities within medical devices. 4. Detect compromised medical devices that are behaving erratically and a potential threat to the infrastructure as a whole through visualisation techniques. The benefits of a system that analyses and visualises trends of medical data within the Critical Infrastructure are numerous. The system will provide valuable information as to where vulnerabilities are within the infrastructure so that solutions can be developed to patch them. The system will also allow the developers of medical devices to make more informed decisions about the design of their devices in order to make them less vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

Leonard Arregoces - London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Advised by: Alec Miners

Introducing relative efficacy and risk analysis into the licensing process, and harmonisation with the technology assessment process. The purpose of this PhD research is to produce with one single complex model, a whole disease model of breast cancer, enough information to conduct the benefit risk assessment and a health technology assessment of new drugs compared to those already available.

Azaz Bin Sharif - The Western University, Advised by: David Stanford

Computer simulation model to predict Emergency Department (ED) patient flows for efficient management of ED operations. I am a third year PhD student at the department of Statistics and Actuarial Sciences at the Western University, London, Canada. The purpose of this research project is to accurately predict the arrivals and admissions to the emergency department so that ED managers can efficiently manage ED resources in order to meet patients clinical need as well as governments specified performance benchmark.

ED is equipped with so many inter-connected activities that it is hard to accommodate complex ED operation with a straight forward analytical model. Therefore, simulation is the key method to answer my research questions.

We are collecting data from two Ontario hospitals from where we are going to estimate the parameters required for our simulation model. I will simulate arrivals and admissions that will postulate the historical behavior allowing certain degree of randomness. First step would be to evaluate the current ED setting on certain performance measures. Second step will be to modify the present ED operations (keeping the resource level constant) according to the variations in demand and re-evaluate the performance measures. Finally, what if scenarios will be analyzed to facilitate ED managers with the extent to which adjustment towards stuffing levels and other resources will have to be made to meet the ED performance standards.

Emergency departments performance standards are prevalent in many jurisdictions; specifically, in the developed countries like UK, Canada, Australia, etc. Fluctuations in the demand and unable to adjust ED resources accordingly is one of the major reasons for not meeting the ED performance standards.

We hope our simulation model will facilitate ED managers to efficiently manage ED operations so that both the patients clinical need and the governments performance standards are met.

There are other extensions of the current proposed research that we would also like to answer; for example, how can we minimize the overall waiting time of the different acuity patients.

Simulations have been used in the ED settings previously but no studies have looked at ED patient demand separately for different acuity level and how ED managers may efficiently manage ED resources to meet their respective performance standards.

This simulation will offer a different perspective in the health care decision making field. So far I know Simul8 is the pioneer among simulation softwares that has been successfully applied in many healthcare applications.

Panagiotis Manolitzas - Technical University of Crete, Advised by: Evangelos Grigoroudis

In our days every health organization tries to provide valuable and efficient health services to the patients by taking into account some constraints like budget, number of staff, waiting times etc. The most common characteristic of the Emergency Department is crowding. According to American College of Emergency Physicians crowding occurs when the identified need for emergency services exceeds available resources for patient care in the emergency department. Three factor categories which contribute to overcrowding are located. Input factors reflected sources and aspects of patients inflow. Throughput factors are relative to inadequate staffing and finally output factors reflected bottlenecks in other parts of the health system that might affect the ED (like impatient boarding, bed shortages).

Many approaches, from the area of management and information technology, can be adopted by a health care organization in order to optimize its efficiency and effectiveness and to be competitive. Many researchers use the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) for optimizing the procedures of health care organizations. BPR is defined as the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, service and speed. It is obvious that the BPR is a crucial methodology in order to examine the current system via simulation.

Through the simulation the management team will elucidate the weak points of the department and will implement what-if scenarios in order to examine the reaction of the system. Simulation analysis appears to be the right tool in order to improve a business process and to identify its bottlenecks. Many researchers have used various simulation software tools in order to improve various processes. Other researchers use mathematical techniques in order to optimize the department of emergency medicine.

The scope of this research is the development of a Decision Support System for a health care organization (Hospital-Emergency Department). The proposed methodology integrates simulation modeling and multicriteria decision analysis aiming to provide a decision support system to emergency department managers.

Shahin Karimidorabati - Waterloo University, Advised by: Carl Haas

A model for automated Process of change Management in mega projects of the construction industry. In this research I simulate the existing workflows in which the roles and responsibilities are involved and change documents circulates amongst them. Through simulation I can find out how the workflows can more efficiently work when the human tasks are transformed to an automated task.

For more see their research web site.

Toni Cardew - Swansea University, Advised by: Ceri Phillips

Hospital data is commonly reported in terms of hospital activity only e.g. number of operations, number of discharges, average waiting time etc. and is presented per department or per hospital. There is little understanding of the interaction of these factors and how they affect the movement of patients between staff, departments and hospitals i.e. patient flow. Yet, understanding of patient flow is vital in improving timeliness and quality of care as well as reducing costs.

The aim of this project is to simulate respiratory patient flow based on previous hospital data. The model will focus upon patient length of stay in each ward and hospital and the associated costs. This will allow comparison of the cost of those patients that follow the pathway representing best practice and those that do not."

Ibrahim Kucukkoc - Exeter, Advised by: David Zhang

Simulation and Optimisation of Mixed-Model Assembly Lines that are utilised to produce large sized products.

For more see their research web site.

Kislaya Kunjan - Indiana University, Advised by: Mathew Palakal

The proposed research will design, develop and simulate a collaborative treatment decision support solution for challenging chronic conditions, such as cancer. Treatment planning for such complex diseases is challenging given the personalized risk-benefit profile of each treatment option, and it\'s sensitivity to patient preferences and care plans. A novel treatment guidance engine will be developed as part of this solution. The objective is to provide sound evidence-based treatment decision support for patients and clinicians. Simulation is expected to play an important role in this project to test and validate this model before applying this in clinical practice. This project addresses the current national priorities outlined by PCORI, AHRQ, and NIH. An interdisciplinary team has been assembled for carrying out the proposed research.

Bernadette Li - London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Advised by: John Cairns

I am going to use SIMUL8 to conduct a cost-effective analysis to compare different national kidney allocation schemes. Renal replacement therapies for end-stage renal disease, encompassing both dialysis and transplantation, were among the first medical interventions to be assessed using methods of formal cost-effectiveness analysis. Among patients who are candidates for surgery, previously conducted economic evaluations have demonstrated that kidney transplantation results in improved survival and better quality of life at lower cost. However, optimal treatment of end-stage renal disease is hampered by an additional resource constraint beyond a finite healthcare budget, namely the shortage of donor organs. Therefore, there is interest in assessing whether different approaches to allocating the limited number of donor kidneys can be further optimised to achieve maximal health benefit, while at the same time considering both equity in access to transplantation and cost. This PhD will focus on development of a model to simulate both the costs and health outcomes (in terms of quality-adjusted life years) associated with potential alternative deceased donor kidney allocation schemes in the UK. The analysis will take into account relevant donor and recipient factors by drawing on sources of patient level data, including an ongoing national prospective observational cohort study involving all 23 transplanting renal units in the UK, as well as historical data from the NHS Blood and Transplant database. An important aim of this research will be to construct a model with sufficient flexibility so that it can be updated as new data becomes available. The outputs of the model can be used to gain an understanding of the potential impact of changes to the national kidney allocation scheme and to inform future policy.

Daniella Bezerra - Federal University of Amazonas, Advised by: Raimundo da Silva Barreto

Forest engineers use mathematical models to understand forest dynamics and carbon balance. However, there are no computational models that support configuration, componentization, and reuse for this domain, and the engineers face the problem of how to minimize time, cost, and effort of carbon estimation. These models are in general domain-specific, e.g.,the equations used to estimate carbon in a tropical forest can not be used directly in a temperate forest, as the species of trees are different and the allometric coefficients change. Consequently, there are many methodologies for carbon estimation. The great diversity of existing mathematical models for estimating biomass and carbon and the fact that new models continue to arise lead to discussions inside the forestry community. The focus of these discussions is on repeatability, auditing, and effectiveness of this methodologies, mostly related to the temporal and spatial scope of experiments. My hypothesis is that a computational model based on Domain Theory and Engineering using Model Driven Engineering and Domain Specific Language can help and conduct for a better choice and correlation between equations, variables and scenarios and to test some strategies I need tools like SIMUL8.

For more see their research web site.

Dimitra Kalaitzi - Aston Univerity, Schhol of Engineering, Advised by: Matopoulos Aristides

This research will try to pinpoint the strategies to be adopted and adjusted and the parameters/measures to be monitored for optimising the use of resources in the agri-food supply chain.This project will explore how decisions taken at every stage of the supply chain have crucial implications for resource consumption. This research will give insights into how agri-food industry can be more environmentally friendly by avoiding actions that lead for example to water pollution and land degradation. Moreover, the study will test and evaluate the different strategies for the agri-food supply chain that can lead to more balanced performance in all dimensions of the triple bottom line. Concerning SIMUL8, simulation plays a crucial role in such a research as enable you to design a supply chain more efficient and minimise its environmental impact. Thus, I willbe building and running models to examine the impact that different supply chain configurations will have on the use of resources (land, water, energy etc.) in the agri-food supply chain. As far as strategy is concerned, i mean the strategies that companies follow. For example some companies are proactive and have a positive attitude towards environmental issues so they take them into consideration to plan their network supply chain.

Ren Schnemann - Technische Universitt Berlin, Department of Land and Sea Transport Systems, Advised by: Jrgen Siegmann

Transshipment performance at the interface sea-rail, modelling of logistics and process chains in cargo terminals and marshalling yards

Lubo Janek - Economic University of Bratislava, Advised by: Peter Zvodn

Business Process Management with simulation analysis of business processes. The main purpose of my research is to develop a framework for application of BPM based on quantitative analysis of business processes. I already have student version of SIMUL8 but I would like to use OptQuest for optimization of analyzed processes.

Katherine Penny - Southampton, Advised by: Sally Brailsford

The PhD Research is based within the Care Life Cycle (CLC) Project which is a 5 year multidisciplinary research programme funded by the EPSRC to investigate the supply and demand of health and social care in the context of an aging society. This PhD project specifically looks at the use of telecare to help meet the social care needs of people with dementia; enabling people to remain within their own homes for longer and out of long term institutional care. Ultimately this project will lead to the development of a discrete event simulation (DES) model which will be used to examine the facilitating and obstructive factors that influence telecare uptake for people with dementia.

Nauman Riaz - University of Gujrat, Advised by: Simon Taylor

Windows-based Distributed Simulation of Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) Simulation Packages over the GRID using Service Oriented HLA RTI

Shoshana Hahn-Goldberg - University of Toronto, Advised by: Howard Abrams

Simulation will be used to model a dedicated stroke unit at the hospital. The proposed unit was developed using resources from other wards and it is desired to determine whether the correct resource amounts were used as well as test scenarios of varying demand. This research is a post-doctoral project at the hospital, but there is an academic supervisor associated with the project.

Anders Jensen - Technical University of Demark, Advised by: Steen Leleur

Appraisal of Transport Projects: Assessing Robustness in Decision Making. The research is using Multi-criteria modelling for assessing non-monetary impacts of transport projects. Furthermore, the research uses decision conferencing.

Amjad Alfudail - Warwick Manufacturing Group, Advised by: Darek Ceglarek

The improvement of the Emergency department in hospitals while dealing with patients the have more than one chronic diseases

Manuel Esperon-Miguez - Cranfield University, Advised by: Professor Philip John

IVHM into legacy toolsets
Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) consists of using diagnostic and prognostic tools to reduce the maintenance cost of a vehicle and increase its availability. While diagnostic tools reduce the time required to identify the source of a fault, prognostic technology can be used to replace parts before they fail, saving time and money and increasing the safety of the platform. The information generated by these tools also helps to improve the management of the maintenance by anticipating the demand for parts and personnel.
My research focuses on finding the optimum way of retrofitting these tools on airplanes which are already in service. This is a challenge from a technical and organizational point of view. To determine how maintenance management would benefit from using IVHM I shall model the current support process of military airplanes and, using this model, determine the optimum way of implementing IVHM. The model will simulate how a complete squadron is maintained, including aspects such as stock of components, personnel available, efficiency of auxiliary material and any other key resources.

Madhu Sachidananda - Loughborough University, Wolfson school of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Advised by: Shahin Rahimifard

My research includes looking at water used for processes in manufacturing industries to minimise the freshwater consumption and waste water generation. By looking at the 4 important water management options, Remove, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, the most cost beneficial solution can be modelled to reduce the overall cost of using water in a process without compromising the environment. One of the goal of the research is to simulate the cost model that can help industries make decisions based on the 4Rs.

Enda Coates - Waterford Institute of Technology, Advised by: Michael Pedini

Supply chain analysis of wood chip production from Irish forest plantations.

To date I have conducted intensive productivity studies on harvesting, forwarding and chipping machinery used in Irish and European supply chains. I have constructed a cost model in Microsoft Excel which uses macros to run Monte Carlo simulations using this data. This allows for risk assessment of the financial return from forests, and sensitivity analysis of parameter change. My research going forward will include road haulage time studies, and studies on intermediate storage areas between forest and consumer (commercial and industrial). I am currently learning to use the SIMUL8 software under the educational licence at Waterford Institute of Technology, working with the Learning SIMUL8 book by Hauge/Paige. Already I can see how I can apply the software in my work. I intend to use the programme to model the whole supply chain from standing tree to boiler grate. Using the model I shall be investigating a number of questions such as; storage size requirement, number of transport vehicles required, machine interaction, drying rates etc.
www.woodenergy.ie

Stephen Herman - University of Hertfordshire, Advised by: Geoffrey Hodgson

Adaptability and Survival in populations of smaller companies

I have created an adaptability instrument and now wish to simulate what happens to adaptability with a range of birth and death rates over time.

Paula Escudero Marin - Lancaster University, Advised by: Mike Pidd

Agent Based Modelling in Healthcare.

Jerry Shaw - University of Louisville, Advised by: Sunderesh Heragu

Evaluate both financial and operational impacts of various policies on the flow of personnel through the Army's commissioned officer training locations

Nopparat Manavakun - University of Helsinki, Advised by: Esko Mikkonen

Appropriate harvesting technology apply to eucalyptus plantations operations

This deals with finding an appropriate, modern intermediate technology solutions for harvesting eucalyptus plantations in Thailand. The simulation is developed to evaluate and select the appropriate options to be implemented in Thailand and elsewhere in tropical conditions.

Dong Joo Shin - Jeonju University, Korea, Advised by: Hoyeon Chung

The reduction of cycle time, lead time, inventory and error rate in automotive industry

After heat treatment(quenching, tempering, straightening and polishing), the automobile shock absorber piston rod manufacturing process includes lathing, grooving, milling, rolling, inspection and finally packing. Lathing, which is performed 2 or 3 times, is for the forming of the main of the piston rod. Grooving is for equipping the stopper to determine the condition of a stroke. Milling and rolling are for equipping and assembling the shock absorber. In this condition, we have a plan to experiment simulation. In this simulation we want to know about the reduction of cycle time, lead time, inventory and error rate etc....

Fatih Yegul - University of Waterloo, Advised by: Mustafa Yavuz

Profit maximization by simulation based optimization on flow-type production systems

This project aims to develop an expert-system based simulation-optimization method in order to find the best manufacturing system configuration that maximizes the profit of a simple (single-product) flow-type production line. The method can either be used for new factory investment decisions or for assessment of improvement options for an existing system. First, the whole manufacturing system is modeled using discrete-event simulation software, which serves as a black-box type optimization model for profit maximization. After the decision variables have been determined, simulation model is run repeatedly by an expert algorithm to obtain the best combination of decision variables that maximizes the profit for a given time period. Expert algorithm intelligently searches through a large number of input combinations using a set of rules that are based on various simulation outputs. A real-life example has been discussed and results are compared to results of some meta-heuristic methods such as simulated annealing and tabu search.
More Details
Update May 2011: Now I'll start producing new algorithms which would hopefully beat OptQuests performance in achieving near optimal solutions. I will continue to use Simul8 experiments extensively during this phase.

Jiabin Lou - University of Southampton, Advised by: Wu Yue

Vehicle scheduling and storage management in container terminals.

Daniel Wright - Aston Business School, Advised by: Prasantan Dey

The implementation and operation of small-scale bioenergy combined heat and power schemes. Using SIMUL8 to create a stochastic VIM of regional heat and power demand scenarios for domestic dwellings.

Hajji Mustapha - University of Hawaii at Manoa, Advised by: Ouazar Driss

The simulation-optimization problem is to find the optimal pump schedule for a hydraulic system composed of several pumps, reservoirs of water and treatment plants, under specified tariff structure to minimize the electricity cost, with respect to all constraints. The optimal schedule minimizes the peak electricity demand by shifting the load as possible to off peak period based on electricity tariff. This requires knowledge of reservoirs storage capacities, treatment capacity, consumer demand pattern and electricity tariff which are often a function of time of use.

Mehmood G. Sayyad - University of Madras, Chennai, India

Working with experts such as Diabetologists and Endocrinologists, to create several simulation models on the natural history of type 2 diabetes and its complications. One model on Diabetic retinopathy (DR), a well-known complication due to diabetes, uses a transition diagram has been finalized with the help of experts (Ophthalmologists and Diabetologists). In addition, an Ayurveda (an ancient Indian system of medicine, originated in India over 5000 years ago) approach will be incorporated to prevent the onset of diabetes and its complications. The stengths of Ayurveda will be evaluated in terms of preventive policies by using appropriate simulation models. The next course of action will be to obtain the necessary parameters to aid the modular development from Ayurveda point of view. Further, a prospective data on the newly diagnosed Indian type 2 diabetics will be analysed statistically to form the necessary risk groups that are to be used in the simulation models.

Derrick Fournier - The Richard Ivey School of Business, Advised by: Greg Zaric

Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Optimization Model

The purpose of this project is to determine the optimal number of NICU beds that the province of British Columbia should have on a cost basis. Simulation is the key method of research for this project. I am simulating births and arrival of neonates at 13 different hospital NICUs across 16 different health regions. Each NICU offers a different level of care (there are 3 standard levels). There is variability in arrival of the neonates, length of stay and level of care needed. The model simulates the location of birth of the neonate, what level of care is needed, where the baby is treated, when they are transferred to another facility and when they are released from hospital. There are roughly 43000 births in British Columbia per year and close to 10% of those require some sort of NICU care.

Piyawat Chanintrakul - The University of Hull Logistics Institute

Evaluating the use of simulation as a decision support tool in the implementation of e-business strategies in manufacturing companies and the reduction of the uncertainty usually associated with this type of implementation. The project research questions are:

My research topic is related to reverse logistics. We have attempted to formulate a non-linear programming models and simulation models to determine optimal (profit-maximising) acquisition prices and selling prices. We have to use a simulation model to deal with more realistic problems e.g. uncertainty issues in terms of supply rate and process failure. A case study in the recycled mobile phone sector is used. The mobile phone recycling company buys end-of-use handsets from end users. Then, the firm has applied multiple recovery options such as direct resell, repair, refurbishment, and recycling in order to add value to old mobile phones and then sell reprocessed mobile phones to a secondary market.

Pavel Albores - University of Strathclyde, Glasgow UK

Is simulation suitable as a tool to analyze the effect of e-business implementation in the business processes of manufacturing companies?
Can patterns be identified that characterize the e-business processes of manufacturing companies?
Can reusable simulation templates be derived from these patterns?
What are the limitations, scope and range of applicability of these templates?
What methodology must be followed when using simulation in this context?

Emre Enginarlar - University of Michigan, Ann Arbor US

My dissertation research is on in-process and finished goods buffer allocation in serial and assembly production lines. It requires hundreds of simulation results.

Brian Flanagan - Waterford Institute of Technology, Republic of Ireland

My research thesis is concerned with the automation of production scheduling in a flexible manufacturing environment. To achieve this I intend to use a combination of Artificial Intelligence technologies (i.e. Neural Networks - OPTIMIZ/OptQuest and an Expert System) in conjunction with SIMUL8 to achieve optimum or near optimum production schedules.

Andrew Greasley - Aston University, Birmingham UK

Investigating, using industrial case studies, the level of awareness and barriers to greater use of the discrete-event simulation technique. Placing particular emphasis on investigating use in service industries (e.g. Police service) and its relationship with change methodologies such as business process reengineering and activity based costing.

Kathy Kotiadis - University of Kent, Canterbury UK

My research involves modeling the health and social care system of the older people and is part of a larger project called ICON funded by the health and social care authorities.

Philip Viljoen - University of Pretoria ZA

Management system for multi-project environment with shared resources using buffers to provide protection and a common priority system. Research methodology: simulation of workflow through unique projects using same resources.

Truword Kapamara - Coventry University, UK

Investigating ways of optimizing patient pathways at a radiotherapy cancer clinic using scheduling approaches. The main aim is to minimize the amount of time patients wait for their first definitive treatment to times targeted by the Department of Health in UK. SIMUL8 to be used to model the various paths taken by both in and out patients at the cancer clinic.

Kathryn Hoad - Warwick University, UK

Appropriate use of a simulation model requires accurate measures of model performance. This in turn, requires decisions concerning three key areas: warm-up, run-length and number of replications. Simulation software, however, gives little or no guidance in making these decisions. A three year project, "Automatic Simulation Output Analysis", sponsored by the EPSRC and SIMUL8 and undertaken by Warwick Business School, is investigating the development of a methodology for automatically advising a simulation user on these three decisions.

Joe Viana - University of Southampton

Linking the strategic element of system dynamics (SD) modelling using VENSIM with the operational and more detailed modelling power of SIMUL8. Also linking SIMUL8 to geographical referencing software either ARCGIS or MAPINFO. The study will focus on Sexaully Transmitted Infections (STI) in particular Chlamydia. The SD model will generate monthly demand figures (total number of patients infected). This total number of patients for that month will be converted into arrival patterns based on some statistical analysis and used to run the Simul8 model of an STI clinic for one month. This will incorporate the variability in treatment that cannot be incorporated into the SD model and the total number treated will be fed back into the SD model which will be run for another month.