Household Location Choice Model (HLCM)

Objective

The Household Location Choice Model predicts the location choices of new or relocating households.

Algorithm

Households to be located by this model are those that were added by the HouseholdTransitionModel or predicted to move by the HouseholdRelocationModel. The model selects all those households with no location, and identifies all available, vacant housing units within the simulation year. Since the choice sets are generally too large, normally random sampling of alternatives is used to construct plausible sized choice sets. It then uses a Multinomial Logit Model structure to generate location choice probabilities across the choice set for each household. The location probabilities are used with Monte Carlo Sampling to make a determination for each household regarding which of the available locations they will choose. Once a household has chosen a location, that location is committed to the household (like a rental contract or closing on a purchase of a house) and the residential unit becomes unavailable for any other households, until such time as the occupying household is predicted to move.

Configuration

The configuration of the HLCM in the parcel model system is summarized in the following table:

Element	Setting
Agent	Household
Location Set	Buildings - which are located on parcels
Dependent Variable	Location of each household: building_id
Model Type	Multinomial Logit Model
Estimation Method	Maximum Likelihood
Submodels	Building Type - separate models can be specified for groups of households by household characteristics, such as size or income group
Independent Variables	Attributes of households interacted with attributes of buildings: Price, density, accessibility, zonal composition of households and employment

Data

The following tables are used by the Household Location Choice Model in the parcel-based version of UrbanSim.

Table Name	Brief Description
households	Synthetic households table
buildings	Buildings from which available residential units are evaluated for location
zones	Zones are used to compute density, social composition, and accessibility variables
travel_data	Skims from the travel model are used to compute accessibility variables

-- PaulWaddell - 09 Dec 2009