A
talented band of coders in St. Petersburg, Russia has put together a
nifty simulation modeling application written in Java.  Anylogic™ “supports virtually all existing
approaches to discrete event and continuous modeling, such as process
flow diagrams, system dynamics, agent-based modeling, state charts,
equation systems, etc. With this incredibly rich toolset you are not
limited with the technology anymore – analyze the problem, identify the
best approach, and find the solution!”

The
package is relatively affordable, especially if one can qualify for the
educational discount.  It could make for a handy tool to model
and/or illustrate a variety of dynamic aspects in an urban setting —
ambulance response time, crowd movement during an anti-war
demonstration.



Today, too, the roll-out of the LA Times re-designed web site includes an intuitive interactive map of freeway traffic flow
— real time — of the greater LA basin.  Perhaps some
enterprising news organization will figure out a way to tie these maps
from SigAlert into the dashboard-mounted GPS navigation devices.  Or will SigAlert itself deliver those goods?