A simulation is by nature an implementation of the assumptions of the modeler (King and Kraemer, 1993). The assumptions and generalizations selected by a modeler depend largely on what the objectives of the simulation are. One of the most useful windfalls of a simulation exercise is assessing how completely one understands the system being simulated.
This simulation was created with the information available from the
Sarasota Bay boat monitoring project described in
Antonini and Box (1996). While a reasonably complete picture of boat
traffic has resulted from this simulation, the issues addressed in the
preceding paragraphs should be considered as ways to improve such a
study in the future.