June 30, 2015

Using GoldSim to Simulate Projects

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

The planning and management of programs and large projects is inherently difficult, not only due to their complexity, but also because something almost always goes wrong (Murphy’s Law!). By combining the flexibility of a general-purpose and highly-graphical probabilistic simulation framework with specialized features to support financial modeling and scenario analysis, GoldSim is ideally suited as a high-level project planning tool suitable during the feasibility assessment and conceptual design phases, while the exact scope of the program is still in flux and it is critical to simulate the range of possible outcomes.

June 16, 2015

Probabilistic Risk Assessment of Space Missions Using GoldSim

Posted by Rick Kossik

Many of you are very familiar with how GoldSim has been used for many years to carry out simulations of environmental systems, such as mines, water supply systems and hazardous waste sites. However, because GoldSim was designed as a flexible probabilistic simulation system, there are many cool and interesting applications in a wide variety of other arenas.  Perhaps one of the most interesting is the use of GoldSim for probabilistic risks assessments of space missions.

June 2, 2015

Stakeholder Involvement for Environmental Flow Alternatives

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

Sometimes it is a challenge to involve a diverse audience in the modeling process of a complex system. It is important that you adequately reflect the complexities of the system while at the same time present the results clearly and concisely for people that have different perspectives. Recently, Ryan Morrison (USGS) and Mark Stone (Assistant professor at UNM) were able to leverage the visual and dynamic strengths of GoldSim to successfully involve a diverse group of stakeholders in evaluating flow alternatives for the Rio Chama basin, New Mexico. I wanted to highlight this modeling application because of its unique approach within the world of dynamic simulation and to demonstrate the utility of GoldSim's new scenario management capability.