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Behavioral Calibration and Analysis of a Large-Scale Travel Microsimulation

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Abstract

This article reports on the calibration and analysis of a fully disaggregate (agent-based) transport simulation for the metropolitan area of Zurich. The agent-based simulation goes beyond traditional transport models in that it equilibrates not only route choice but all-day travel behavior, including departure time choice and mode choice. Previous work has shown that the application of a novel calibration technique that adjusts all choice dimensions at once from traffic counts yields cross-validation results that are competitive with any state-of-the-art four-step model. While the previous study aims at a methodological illustration of the calibration method, this work focuses on the real-world scenario, and it elaborates on the usefulness of the obtained results for further demand analysis purposes.

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Notes

  1. Cadyts is not constrained to the MATSim microsimulation but is designed to be compatible with a wide variety of transport simulation systems.

  2. The probability of a measurement y a (k) would be \(p(y_a(k)) \sim \exp[-(y_a(k) - q_a(k))^2/(2 \sigma_a^2(k))]\). Because of independence, the probability of a measurement set y would be the product of this, i.e., \(p(\mathbf{y}) \sim \prod_{ak} \exp[-(y_a(k) - q_a(k))^2/(2 \sigma_a^2(k))]\). From there, \( \frac{\partial \mathcal{L}(\mathbf y)}{\partial P_n(i)} = \frac{\partial \ln p(\mathbf{y})}{\partial P_n(i)} \sim \sum_{ak \in i} \frac{y_a(k) - q_a(k)}{\sigma_a^2(k)} \), where the sum now goes over all ak that are used by plan i; since the expected traffic volume on a link in a given time interval is in uncongested conditions equal to the sum of the choice probabilities of all plans containing that link in that time interval, the derivative of q a (k) with respect to P n (i) is one if ak ∈ i and zero otherwise.

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Correspondence to Gunnar Flötteröd.

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Flötteröd, G., Chen, Y. & Nagel, K. Behavioral Calibration and Analysis of a Large-Scale Travel Microsimulation. Netw Spat Econ 12, 481–502 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11067-011-9164-9

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