Traffic Microsimulation Suite PAMINA
PAMINA (short for Parallel Microscopic Network Algorithm) was designed to simulate large scale road traffic networks on a microscopic scale (individual vehicles) using UNIX workstation clusters.
Components
The simulation suite consists of three major components:
- Planner
The planner replans a certain fraction of an existing route set based upon the travel time feedback provided by previous runs of the microsimulation. The input and output format is the original TRANSIMS route file format.
- Route Converter
The route converter is able to convert the TRANSIMS route file format into the PAMINA file format. At the same time it optionally "clips" the routes from the network used for replanning to the usually smaller network used for the microsimulation.
- Microsimulator PAMINA
The microsimulator PAMINA is the core of the simulation suite. It reads the route file provided by the route converter and executes the routes contained therein on a parallel computing platform.
Features of the Microsimulator
- Execution of Route-sets:
The simulation is driven by a list of route-plans called
route-set. Each route-plan consists of an origin, a
departure time, a list of link Ids decribing the route, a
destination, and a scheduled arrival time. All route-plans of a
route-set are sorted by departure time. During the simulation
the simulator instatiates one vehicle per route-set at the
given departure time. If the location where the vehicle is to
be inserted is blocked by other vehicles, the vehicle is
appended to a queue for later insertion.
As soon as a vehicle has been inserted it follows is route-plan
through the network until it reaches its final destination
where it will be removed.
- Street Segments (Links):
The dynamics of motion correspond to the asymmetric two-lane cellular automaton for traffic
flow developed by Nagel and Schreckenberg. For links with
more than two lanes, the rule-set has been extended to prevent
collisions by simultaneously changing vehicles.
The speed limit can be individually set for each link. The length is given by the Euclidean distance of the two adjoining intersections or by a predefined logical length.
- Intersections:
Intersections are modeled by adding a road-block to all
incoming lanes. Vehicles which are in a range of
vmax from the intersection are scanned and, if neccessary,
moved to their correct destination links.
At signalized intersections, a time schedule determines which incoming links are scanned (green) and which are inactive (red).
- Online Routing:
The built-in router can be used to re-route a certain fraction
of vehicles identified by their plan numbers. It uses the
current link velocities to compute alternative paths which are
assigned to the vehicles if they meet certain quality
requirements.
Documentation
The PAMINA simulation suite comes with a manual in PDF format.
For a list of changes to the suite see the ChangeLog.
Supported Platforms
| Platform | Compiler | Architecture | Since Version | Latest Test |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linux 2.4.24 | g++ (3.4.4) | PVM LINUX | 0.9 | 05/01/2005 |
| Linux 2.4.24 | g++ (3.4.4) | MPI LINUX ch_p4 | 0.9.1 | 05/01/2005 |
| Solaris (SunOS 5.7) | g++ (2.95.3) | PVM SUN4SOL2 | 0.9 | 04/01/2005 |
Prerequisites For Compiling And Running the Suite
The suite depends on a handful of libraries and tools. Most of them are available as
open source packages on any unix system. These are:
- GNU g++ (3.4.4)
- GNU zip (1.3.5)
- GNU make (3.80)
- GNU m4 (1.4)
- GNU bison (1.875d)
- GNU flex (2.5.31)
- Python (2.3.4)
- GNU awk (3.1.3)
- Gnuplot (4.0 patchlevel 0)
For generating GIF files of the statistical diagrams one optionally needs the following tools:
- ppmtogif (10.0)
The version numbers listed above are the ones currently used for PAMINA development. Slightly older or newer versions should work in most cases. However, the core libraries for the parallization may be harder to come by. This is either
The home page of PVM has been down for a while. That's why a tar archive of version 3.4.4 has been included in the Pamina archive (see below).
Download
| Version | Latest Update | File Size | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.9 | 04/01/2005 | 1360817 | PaminaIII-0.9.tgz |
| 0.9.1 | 05/01/2005 | 2493023 | PaminaIII-0.9.1.tgz |
Scenarios
Scenarios serve as examples and test setups for PAMINA. Currently, there are two
scenarios available and one is in preparation.
Links
- TRANSIMS
Traffic research project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Most of the data that was used for PAMINA comes from the test beds of TRANSIMS. - NRW-FVU
Research initiative Nordrhein-Westfalen Research Cooperative Traffic Simulation and Impacts on the Environment which investigates the phonema of vehicular traffic and its impacts on the environment. -
Two Lane Traffic Simulation on Cellular Automata
M. Rickert, K. Nagel, M. Schreckenberg, A. Latour, Physica A, Volume 231, 534 (1996) .ps.gz, 1051 kB - Traffic Simulation on Distributed Memory Computers
Ph.D. Thesis, M. Rickert -
Experiences with a simplified microsimulation for the Dallas/Fort Worth area
M. Rickert, K. Nagel, Int. J. Mod. Phys C, Volume 8, No.3, 483-503 (1997), 20 pages, 14 figures, DIN A4, .ps.gz, 208kB -
Parallel Real-time Implementation of Large-scale,
Route-plan-driven Traffic Simulation
M. Rickert, P. Wagner, Int. J. Mod. Phys C, Volume 7, 133-153 (1996) DIN A4, .ps.gz, 112kB, 19 pages -
Real-time Traffic Simulation of the German Autobahn
Network
M. Rickert, P. Wagner, Ch. Gawron, January 1996 (accepted by PASA 96, to be published as part of the proceedings by World Scientific Publishing Singapore) 18 pages, 8 figures, .ps.gz, 84kB
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