by Rienk Ate Bijlsma, Tom van der Schelde
As presented at the 2019 Winter Simulation Conference
Since 1990 Rijkswaterstaat (part of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management) has used SIVAK, a simulation system to analyze ship handling of traffic at locks, narrow waterways and other waterway infrastructures. Among else it can be used to investigate risks in extreme situations on the waterway. Recently, SIVAK has been redeveloped by Systems Navigator, Witteveen+Bos and MARIN, in state-of-the-art object-oriented simulation software (SIMIO). The Simio model works seamlessly with Systems Navigator’s Scenario Navigator SAAS platform allowing Rijkswaterstaat to run SIVAK as a webbased solution available to users from any location, including simulation model execution, animation, scenario management, KPI reporting, debugging, documentation & scenario comparisons.
About Sivak
SIVAK is a simulation system that has been in use by Rijkswaterstaat since 1990 to analyze ship handling of traffic at locks, narrow waterways and other waterway infrastructures. The system takes into account the effects of the traffic composition and traffic flow, operating strategy and traffic control, etc. Typical results from this model are visualizations on waiting times, utilization of waterways, waiting costs for different ship types per section of the waterway. The model calculations form an important basis for the MIRT (Dutch Multi-Year Plan for Infrastructure, Spatial Planning and Transport) in order to identify and prevent future bottlenecks, while also being applied when developing a new infrastructure.
The New Sivak
The old SIVAK was built in the programming language PROSIM which is no longer supported. Maintenance and further development of the tool became a challenge due to its design and technical execution. As Rijkswaterstaat relies very much on this tool, they started looking to include a new and more modern tool that could expand their capabilities. The biggest challenge for this project was to transfer the concepts and ideas that were developed in SIVAK in the past into the latest object-oriented simulation software. The new model build in Simio brings many opportunities to improve the design, and model generation and population while making SIVAK a state-of-the-art simulator. The Simio model works seemlessly with Systems Navigator’s Scenario Navigator SAAS platform allowing Rijkswaterstaat to run SIVAK as a web-based solution available to users from any location, including simulation model execution, animation, scenario management, KPI reporting, debugging, documentation & scenario comparisons.