Simulation building blocks for airport terminal modeling

Airports are an ideal application area for simulation. The processes are in a continuous state of change, are complex and stochastic, involve many moving objects, and require a good performance that can be measured in several different performance indicators. Within airports, but also between airports, the same kind of questions are answered over and over again. Often, however, new simulation models are built for each question, if possible copying some parts of previous models. Structured reuse of simulation components is rarely seen. This paper shows an approach for airport terminal modeling that departs from the assumption that reusable simulation building blocks can form the core of a powerful airport modeling tool, which is able to answer different questions at airports better and faster than traditional models. The building blocks have been implemented in the commercially available simulation language eM-Plant. Several studies carried out with this library were very successful.