Lesson 9 - Exercise: Using Scenarios

Now that we have discussed the various aspects of scenario modeling, in this Lesson we will carry out an Exercise based on what we have learned.

We are going to start with an Exercise we built in the previous Unit.  You should have saved a model named Exercise22.gsm.  Open the model now. (If you failed to save that model, you can find the Exercise, named Exercise22_Feedback_Control.gsm, in the “Exercises” subfolder of the “Basic GoldSim Course” folder you should have downloaded and unzipped to your Desktop.)

Open that file and refresh your memory on what we did in that simple model.

Recall that this model simulated a pond that received a Stochastic inflow. The goal was to maintain the water volume around a particular “target” level.  We did this by representing a dead band using a Status element. The model looks like this:

We are not going to change the model at all.  Instead, we are simply going to create three scenarios.  The only difference between the three scenarios is that the Pumping_Rate will differ: it should take on three different values: 50 m3/day, 100 m3/day and 400 m3/day.

Run the three scenarios and compare the results.

Stop now and try to build and run the model for all three scenarios.

Once you are done with your model, save it to the “MyModels” subfolder of the “Basic GoldSim Course” folder on your desktop (call it Exercise23.gsm). If, and only if, you get stuck, open and look at the worked out Exercise (Exercise23_Feedback_Scenarios.gsm in the “Exercises” subfolder) to help you finish the model.

This model should have three scenarios defined, so the Scenario Manager should look something like this:

The Scenario Data dialog should look like this:

After running the three scenarios, the Time History Result element should look like this:

What you will note here is that the high pumping rate scenario successfully keeps the volume at the target.  The medium pumping rate does fairly well (but allows the volume to drift a bit – the rate is not always high enough to keep up with the inflow).  The low pumping rate fails  - it is too low to keep up with the inflow.

This particular Time History Result is interesting because it actually contains not one, but two different outputs.  You can see this by pressing the Edit Properties… button on the far right side of the tool bar:

Close the Properties dialog and return to the chart. When we looked at scenarios in Time History Result elements previously, the Time History Result only had a single output. Now we have two.  So how does GoldSim handle this?  You will note at the top of the chart that there is a for drop-list:

When you have run scenarios and have multiple outputs, you can select what you want to display.  If you select one of the first two (with the prefix “Result”), GoldSim displays the three scenarios for that particular output (result).  For example, select “Pumping Rate from Pond” and GoldSim will display the pumping rate (rather than the pond volume) for all three scenarios:

On the other hand, if you select one of the three with the prefix “Scenario”, GoldSim displays the two outputs for that particular scenario: 

This features allows you to effectively display all the scenario results in multiple ways.