PHASE 1

Team J - Sim City: Preliminary Requirements

            "Sim City" will be a program that allows a user to create a virtual representation of a city. This virtual representation of a city will allow users to build roads, zone for development, construct buildings, construct public buildings, and all other aspects of a city. Having the ability to make a virtual representation of a city before following through with actual constructions would allow city planners to physically see the "future" of the city being planned and let the designer possibly see any mistakes, or improvements that could be made in the city design.
            Our budget-less Sim City program would emulate some aspects of the game “Sim City” but with more in depth detail for better simulation results. First off in project planning would be the internal structure of the simulated city. Like in the real world, everything connects and affects the other things around it.  Zoning would be one of the first stages of design in a city, planning where residents would live, where the commercial district would be, and the industrial district, giving the simulated city its first "shape".
            Allowing the user to select from these different zoning would give the city structure. It would only give access for certain structures in their respective zoning. This plays a big role in the city development in that zoning areas have a big affect of what is going to be around it. In an industrial or commercial zone, their would be more access to public transportation allowing virtual city goers to have transportation for their jobs.
            Roads are also affected by zoning areas. As the zoning becomes more dense and turns into an urban setting different roads are needed when compared to the "suburbs" of the city. Allowing options for different roads of different pavement, stop signs or traffic lights, and width allows for responsible infrastructure spending to properly fit the need of an area.  The different types of roads would have different traffic parameters allowing different flow amount of traffic. Larger main roads would allow more cars to pass through more efficiently than a smaller suburb road. Traffic lights could also be programmed to stay green longer for main roads or can be programmed to remain green unless there are cars trying to cross the intersection waiting at a red light.
            The simulation would also allow the users to simulate construction projects in one of the different zones. The construction speed would be affected by a few factors such as its zoning and surrounding roads. In certain zoning areas construction would only be allowed during certain hours of the day, giving an estimation of how long it would take to construct a building in an area to get an estimate on costs. The infrastructure around it would also affect how expensive it would be to transport materials to the construction sight. If there are railroads near they could be used for transportation of goods to cut costs, or if there are only roads everything would have to be driven in via 18-wheeler.
            All of these options would be accessible via a GUI for the user. There would be a few different panels with different options for different actions. Since there are many different types of roads, there would be a road panel that has a drop down menu allowing a user to select a specific type of road to build in an area.
            There would also be a building constructor option to construct buildings. This would be an intricate option menu allowing the user to input all the parameters for the building such as number of stories, underground levels, materials to be used in construction. All these different options would affect the cost of the construction of the building and therefore would be very important information in any simulation.
            With construction also comes the destruction option in which plans could be made to level buildings or roads to be redeveloped. In any restoration project or any remodeling project, demolition plays an important role. Different structures would take different types of demolition techniques. Small residential buildings could be taken out by heavy machinery but larger buildings need to be demolished using explosives, each of which have different costs and take different amounts of time.
            To run the simulation there would be a menu with different controls and feedback from the simulation. There would be options to run, stop, and pause the simulation, the most basic of options. There would also be much other useful options such as fast forwarding the simulation (making it run x times faster than reality), rewind the simulation, and re-start. Some important information that would be given back to the user would be time lapse, cost of construction/destruction project, affect on traffic in the surrounding area, amount of noise pollution on average and from what time to what time (this affects people living/working around area), and amount of pollution caused by doing project from vehicles delivering materials and machines running to do building.
            All these parameters would have to be built into the system (i.e. pollution from a single vehicle and type of vehicle being used) so that the user can simply choose their options from a menu bar and not have to do anything more than just select. The idea is to make it as simple for the user as possible. It would take a lot of time to categorize different construction vehicles affects on pollution, traffic parameters, and to make estimations on how long construction would take based on how much materials are being used but once completed it would give the user a very simple way to run a simulation to get an estimate on just how much a project would cost and how they could improve upon the project by using different amount of resources and material.
            A program like this could improve the lives of all residents in any city that elects to run simulations with the program. A city planner/designer would be able to do remodeling projects or restoration projects in the city that could improve everyones lives such as improving certain roads to reduce traffic, and create public projects that improve the city. This simulation could be run many times with different parameters to view different possible results. Being able to do cheap simulations allows for the actual project to have been planned out ahead of time to optimize resources and time to reduce the total cost of the construction project. Since many restoration and infrastructure projects are paid through taxes, and cost saving benefits can be used toward different public projects further improving the life of all residents in the city and allowing their tax dollars to be used to the greatest degree.