NOAH as an Innovative Tool for Modeling the Use of Suburban Railways

The paper presents an innovative method called the “Nest of Apes Heuristic” (NOAH) for modeling specific problems by combining technical aspects of transport systems with human decision-making. The method is inspired by nature. At the beginning of the paper, potential problems related to modeling a suburban rail system were presented. The literature review is supplemented with a short description of known heuristics. The basic terminology, procedures, and algorithm are then introduced in detail. The factors of the suburban rail system turn into “Monkeys”. Monkeys change their position in the nest, creating leaders and followers. This allows for the comparison of the factor sets in a real system. The case study area covers the vicinity of Wroclaw, the fourth largest city in Poland. Two experiments were conducted. The first takes into account the average values of the factors in order to observe the algorithm’s work and formulate the stopping criteria. The second is based on the current values of the factors. The purpose of this work was to evaluate these values and to assess the possibilities of changing them. The obtained results show that the new tool may be useful for modeling and analyzing such problems.