The configuration for a simulation is specified by a configuration object.
Opus supports a configuration defined either as a Python dictionary, or as an xml project file
(see Section 20.1.1). This section describes the former.
In both cases, the configuration is used to specify different parts
of the simulation, such as the years in which to run UrbanSim, what
UrbanSim models to run each year, what types of development
projects exist, how to configure each type of development project,
etc. See, for instance, the run configuration in
seattle_parcel/configs/baseline.py (Python dictionary version) or
seattle_parcel/configs/seattle_parcel.xml (xml version).
To use the dictionary version of a configuration, it is required that the referenced configuration Python module defines a class (e.g. SubsetConfiguration) in a file whose name is subset_configuration.py. The class name should be the CamelCase version of the lowercase_with_underscores file name.
To start a simulation using a dictionary-based configuration, use the
script start_run with the desired configuration. First, change to
the directory opus_core/tools and (using for example the configuration from the previous section) execute:
python start_run.py -c psrc.configs.subset_configuration
Use the --help option to see the
possible command line parameters for start_run.
Also see Section 20.3.1 for
configuring a simulation run.