Elsimul

Elsimul is a cross-domain simulation framework designed to support both discrete-event and continuous-time models. The software is intended for researchers and practitioners who require integrated simulations that span domains such as manufacturing, logistics, urban planning, and education. It emphasizes modularity, interoperability, and reproducibility, offering a runtime engine, a library of modeling components, and interfaces for scripting and external tool integration.

Development of elsimul began in 2012 as an open-source initiative fostered by collaborations among universities and industry partners. The project progressed through community contributions and formal governance, establishing a stable application programming interface and an expanding library of example models. A significant release in 2018 introduced enhanced co-simulation capabilities and improved scalability for multi-core and distributed environments.

Architecturally, elsimul uses a component-based design in which simulations are built from reusable blocks representing processes, resources, and interactions. The core runtime provides event scheduling, time management, and synchronization across subsystems. It offers bindings for Python, C++, and Java, a graphical editor for model construction, and standardized data interchange formats to enable interoperability with other tools and datasets.

Elsimul has been applied in academia and industry to study factory optimization, supply-chain resilience, energy and water systems, and urban mobility scenarios. Its approachable API and visualization facilities make it suitable for teaching complex systems modeling and for running exploratory experiments.

Users value its emphasis on interoperability and extensibility, though adoption varies by domain due to competition with established simulation tools. The project maintains a public repository and governance structure with ongoing contributions from researchers and partner organizations.