Benchmark C8 Canal-and-Lock System investigates a canal-and-lock system used by barges moving from one waterway to another. The system is composed of a west canal, a lock, and an east canal. Barges can move through the system in only one direction at a time. The policy for operating the system is to let a up to maximal number barges proceed through the system in the east-bound direction, and vice versa. This ideal uniform east-to-west cycle and west-to-east cycle is ‘disturbed’ by less arriving barges, delayed barges, not available barges at cycle change, and differences in lock operation depending on the direction. For proper operation complex rules for the frequent exception cases must be followed.

While the systems can be modelled by simple process modelling, these complex rules are the modelling challenge in this benchmark. Task are the validation of the model (of the implementation of the complex rules) by given and solved scenarios, and statistical capacity analysis including variance reduction techniques.

This benchmark shows educational aspects for condition implementation in process modelling, and generally for conditional event modelling (as the benchmark can also be solved in a classical programming environment). On experiment level, variance reduction techniques can be trained.