  We describe and numerically test the velocity-dependent one-scale (VOS)
string evolution model, a simple analytic approach describing a string network
with the averaged correlation length and velocity. We show that it accurately
reproduces the large-scale behaviour (in particular the scaling laws) of
numerical simulations of both Goto-Nambu and field theory string networks. We
explicitly demonstrate the relation between the high-energy physics approach
and the damped and non-relativistic limits which are relevant for condensed
matter physics. We also reproduce experimental results in this context and show
that the vortex-string density is significantly reduced by loop production, an
effect not included in the usual `coarse-grained' approach.
