Computing Nash Flows over Time and Thin flows

The NashFlowComputation Tool (NFC) allows the computation of normalized thin flows with resetting and consequently Nash flows over time with or without spillback. NFC, being embedded in a graphical user-interface, facilitates not only quick and easy creation of networks but also the analysis of e.g. earliest arrival time functions and inflow functions in a dynamic equilibrium, which can be computed with a single click for further research. The flow models used are due to [1] in the basic case without spillback and due to [2] in the case of spillback. The algorithms to compute thin flows are based on [2] and [3].

At the moment, NFC is only able to handle single-commodity flow networks. For a useful tool to compute multi-commodity flows (although no equilibria), please check out this repository.

NFC was developed being part of a bachelor thesis [3] and then afterwards enhanced within the TU Berlin/ECMath project Dynamic Models and Algorithms for Equilibria in Traffic Networks.

Requirements

NFC was designed to run on Linux-based OS. If the packages below can be installed, then the tool should run on other OS as well.

Usage

Run mainControl.py to open the GUI.

References

  • [1] Koch, Ronald, and Martin Skutella. "Nash equilibria and the price of anarchy for flows over time." Theory of Computing Systems 49.1 (2011): 71-97.
  • [2] Sering, Leon, and Laura Vargas Koch. "Nash flows over time with spillback." Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 2019.
  • [3] Zimmer, Max. "Nash Flows Over Time: Models and Computation." Bachelor Thesis at TU Berlin (2017)