Modeling the Urban Continuum in an Integrated Framework: Location Choice, Activity-Travel Behavior, and Dynamic Traffic Patterns

Principal Investigators: Ram Pendyala, Yi-Chang Chiu and Paul Waddell

• Sponsor: Federal Highway Administration, US Department of Transportation
• Duration: July 2008 to June 2011
• Project Manager: Brian Gardner, brian.gardner (at) dot (dot) gov

Over the past decade, great strides have been made in the microsimulation of land use, human activity-travel demand, and dynamic transportation networks. The advent of microsimulation modeling tools in these three distinct arenas offers the unique opportunity to develop integrated models of the entire urban system including location choices of households and firms, activity and travel patterns of passengers and freight, and emergent traffic flows on time-dependent networks. This research project constitutes a significant attempt at developing the modeling framework, database systems and structures, and methods and tools for integrated modeling of the urban continuum – from long-term location choices to short-term route choices along the continuous time axis. The project involves the development of a model system that seamlessly integrates models of land use, activity-travel behavior, and dynamic traffic assignment. The project team includes Professor Paul Waddell from the University of California Berkeley and Professors Yi-Chang Chiu and Mark Hickman from the University of Arizona. Agency partners assisting the project team include the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG), Pima Association of Governments (PAG), Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT), Maricopa County Department of Transportation (MCDOT), and Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC).

Project Home Page at ASU

Urban Continuum Collaborative Wiki

-- PaulWaddell - 05 Aug 2009