The name is derived from "Verkehr In Städten - SIMulationsmodell" (German for "Traffic in cities - simulation model").

The scope of application ranges from various issues of traffic engineering (transport engineering,[2] transportation planning, signal timing), public transport, urban planning over fire protection (evacuation simulation) to 3d visualization (computer animation, architectural animation) for illustrative purpose and communication to the general public.

The basic traffic model ruling the movement of vehicles was developed by Rainer Wiedemann in 1974 at Karlsruhe University.

[3] It is a car-following model that considers physical and psychological aspects of the drivers.

The opposite would be a "macroscopic simulation", in which the description of reality is shifted from individuals to "averaged" variables like flow and density.