Arrival Sampling without Replacement for Simulating Fixed Entity Streams in Civil Engineering Systems

Abstract

The need for sampling arrivals without replacement for simulating certain types of civil engineering systems is presented. Specifically, sampling requirements in the form of arriving entities such as a stream of automobiles and trucks, aircraft, shipping vessels, etc., and their scheduling on transportation systems are discussed. A methodology for random sampling, without replacement, of entities from a known discrete distribution is presented. Computational complexities associated with organization and randomization of large input streams are addressed. In addition to addressing issues related to the generation of discrete and continuous event occurrences in the entity stream, issues related to incorporating scheduling overrides into the final entity streams are discussed. The methods discussed have successfully been applied for generating streams of shipping vessels for a simulation study of the Panama Canal.