Simulation includes technologies and software tools to better understand, analyse and optimize the dynamics and behavior of complex, physical, biological or geographic systems. In general, simulation is used if system behavior is too complex to be understood analytically.
Strategic Simulation
Economic systems, ecological systems, urban systems, political systems - all systems of principal importance for humanity are first-rate complex systems that are way too complex to be studied and analyzed by analytical methods. Simulation - which one might call strategic simulation in this regard - offers a toolset to cope with the immense complexity of these systems. Improved simulation methodologies and ever increasing computing capacities additionally allow to come ever closer to an improved understanding of these systems with simulation.
Operational Simulation
Simulation concerned with smaller complex or non-complex systems of any domain we can call operational simulation. Operational system simulation is the mimicking of the operation of a smaller real system, such as the day-to-day operation of a bank, or the value of a stock portfolio over a time period, or the running of an assembly line in a factory, or the staff assignment of a hospital or a security company.
In practice, simulation is also extensively used to verify the correctness of design of any sort, be it product design, car design or for example the design of the built environment as with SimWalk, a simulation software for pedestrian flows. Or for example, most if not all digital integrated circuits manufactured today are first extensively simulated before they are manufactured to identify and correct design errors. Simulation early in the design cycle is important because the cost to repair mistakes increases dramatically the later in the product life cycle that the error is detected.
