The following list shows the key features of MATSim:
Fast Dynamic and Agent-Based Traffic Simulation
In many cases, MATSim only takes a couple of minutes for a single simulation of a complete day of traffic. This includes the completely time-dynamic simulation of motorized individual traffic as well as the handling of agents using other modes of transport.
Supports Large Scenarios
MATSim is able to simulate scenarios with several millions agents or network with hundreds of thousands of streeets. All you need is a current, fast desktop computer with plenty of memory. Additionally, MATSim allows you to only simulate a certain percentage of the traffic, speeding up the simulation even more while reducing memory consumption, and still generate useful results.
Sophistic Interactive Visualizer
Forget aggregated results! MATSim provides a fast Visualizer that can display the location of each agent in the simulation and what it is currently doing. It can even connect to a running simulation, allowing interactively querying agents' states, visualizing agents' routes or perform live analyses of the network state.
Versatile Analyses and Simulation Output
During the simulation, MATSim collects several key values from the simulation and outputs them to give you a quick overview of the current state of the simulation. Among other results, it can compare the simulated traffic to real world data from counting stations, displaying the results interactively in Google Earth. Additionally, MATSim provides detailed output from the traffic microsimulation, which can easily be parsed by other applications to create your own special analyses.
Modular Approach
MATSim allows for easy replacement or addition of functionality. This allows you to add your own algorithms for agent-behavior and plug them into MATSim, or use your own transport simulation while using MATSim's replanning features.
Open Source
MATSim is distributed under the Gnu Public License (GPL), which means that MATSim can be downloaded and used free of charge. Additionally, you get the complete Source Code which you may modify within certain constraints (see the license for more details). Written in Java, MATSim runs on all major operating systems, including Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.
Active Development and Versatile Usage of MATSim
Researchers from several locations are currently working on MATSim. Core development takes place at the Berlin Institute of Technology (TU Berlin) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, while additional development (as far as we are aware of) currently takes place in France and South Africa. This distribution of development ensures that MATSim not only works for one scenario/context, but can be adapted to many different scenarios.