HARBORSYM: A DATA-DRIVEN MONTE CARLO SIMULATION MODEL OF VESSEL MOVEMENT IN
HARBORS

David Moser, Keith Hofseth, and Shana Heisey
US Army Corps of Engineers Institute for Water Resources
7701 Telegraph Road, Alexandria, Virginia 22315
Email: Shana.a.Heisey@usace.army.mil

Richard Males
RMM Technical Services, Inc.
3319 Eastside Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45208
Email: males@iac.net

Cory Rogers
PMCL@CDM
PO Box 1316, Carbondale, Illinois 62903
Email: rogerscm@cdm.com

KEYWORDS: Economic analysis, discrete event
simulation, Monte Carlo simulation, port planning, public domain, risk.

ABSTRACT
HarborSym is a planning-level model developed by the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to assist in economic
analyses of proposed deep draft channel improvements.
The model creates an event driven simulation based on
data stored in a database, instead of customization within a
simulation environment. Included in this data are the user
specified transit rules that the model processes with each
vessel call in order to calculate delays within the system.
Users can define alternative sets of channel dimensions or
rules reflecting harbor improvements to determine potential
transportation cost savings resulting from reduced delays.


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