Baseline Synthesis and Microsimulation of Life-stage Transitions within an Agent-based Integrated Urban Model

Abstract

Abstract: This paper presents baseline synthesis and microsimulation of life-stage transitions within an agent-based integrated Transport Land Use and Energy (iTLE) modeling system. The baseline synthesis involves generation of synthetic population and vehicle ownership level synthesis. Synthetic population in generated in two stages: (1) generation of synthetic population at the dissemination area (DA) level, controlling for household- and individual-level attributes; and (2) allocation of the synthetic population at the micro-spatial unit of parcel using a logit-link model. Vehicle ownership synthesis involves a multinomial logit model to determine the vehicle ownership level for the base year. The life-stages of the synthetic population are simulated longitudinally at a yearly simulation time-step within the iTLE framework. The simulated life-stages include: aging, birth, death, in-migration, out-migration, and household formation. The iTLE is coded in the C# DotNET programming platform. A 100% synthetic population is generated for Halifax, Canada. The baseline synthesis and life-stage simulation results are satisfactory. For instance, population synthesis results suggest that around 62.81% of the DAs show an error percentage range of -5% to +5%.