A framework for input uncertainty analysis

Abstract

We consider the problem of producing confidence intervals for the mean response of a system represented by a stochastic simulation that is driven by input models that have been estimated from “real-world” data. Therefore, we want the confidence interval to account for both uncertainty about the input models and stochastic noise in the simulation output; standard practice only accounts for the stochastic noise. To achieve this goal we introduce metamodel-assisted bootstrapping, and illustrate its performance relative to other proposals for dealing with input uncertainty on two queueing examples.