GIS, GeoObjects, and Monte Carlo

Simulation: A Match Made in

Heaven

(or )?

Daniel Opdyke

December 2, 1999

Acknowledgements

UT:Dr. Maidment

Kim Davis

Tim Whiteaker

Lesley Hay Wilson

Andrew Romanek

Julie Kim

ESRI:Maggie Ruan

Rob Burke

Evan

My apologies to anyone I missed…

Outline

Objective

Marcus Hook

Groundwater Modeling

Monte Carlo Simulation

GeoObjects

Results

Objective

Plot time series data

Why?GIS typically displays only spatial data

How?Create GeoObject and place in ArcMap

Run groundwater model

Associate model output with specific object

Give object ability (method) to plot model output

Marcus Hook Refinery

Why?Already createdby Andrew Romanek,et al.

Used inexercise 8

Groundwater Model

Model developed for my dissertation

Monte Carlo Simulation

Brute force method to translate uncertainty in inputs to uncertainty in outputs.

Input values drawn from

assumed probability

distributions.

Model: C = A + B

A is N(0,1), B is N(10,1)

Iteration 1: C = -0.12 + 9.87 = 9.75

Iteration 2: C = -0.33 + 10.52 = 10.19

…ad nauseam

GeoObjects

You know ‘em, you love ‘em

Created HelloWorld objectOnly one custom property: “name”

• didn’t work, used OID instead

Has interface – this works as a handle for VBA

Methods written in VBA in ArcInfo, not C++

• Highly flexible and easy to revise/update

Feature

HelloWorld

Groundwater Elevations and HelloWorld Object (the POD)

Selection of Source Area and POD Locations

Running the Model

Raw Results - MSGraph

Results

Conclusions

ArcInfo 8.0 can interact with other COM compliant software packages

Can be used to drive tons of applications including Excel, Word, MSGraph, @Risk, FrontPage. Not Fortran Example, VBA code in ArcInfo runs a model and automatically updates both an Access database and a web page with the result so multiple users can get results in real time.

-- and vice versa --