Overview of computer simulations- Winter School on Towards Ecosystem Based Management of Marine Fisheries – Building Mass Balance Trophic and Simulation Models

Computer simulation is the discipline of designing a model of an actual or theoretical physical system, executing the model on a digital computer, and analyzing the execution output. Simulation embodies the principle of ``learning by doing'' - to learn about the system we must first build a model of some sort and then operate the model. The use of simulation is an activity that is as natural as a child who role-plays. Children understand the world around them by simulating (with toys and figurines) most of their interactions with other people, animals and objects. As adults, we lose some of this childlike behavior but recapture it later on through computer simulation. To understand reality and all of its complexity, we must build artificial objects and dynamically act out roles with them. Computer simulation is the electronic equivalent of this type of role-playing and it serves to drive synthetic environments and virtual worlds