An activity-based approach for complex travel behaviour modelling

Purpose In this paper an activity-based modelling framework is presented. It enhances many of the characteristics of existing approaches and enables a more accurate travel demand modelling. Methods The model approach proposed explicitly takes into account the households’ role, as well as time and space constraints. Issues related to activity participation and activity planning are explicitly addressed with respect to the horizon of a whole week. The proposed framework allows to reproduce activity lists and activity patterns in an explicit and consistent way. As a consequence, time and mode characteristics of travel demand are more accurately computed. The approach has been designed in order to capture interactions among households members and to explicitly represent trip-chains and relationships between trips within activity patterns. In this paper a comprehensive formalisation of the modelling framework is presented and part of it is estimated on the basis of ad-hoc collected data. Application The modelling framework has been then applied to the Naples’ metropolitan area (southern Italy), a catchment area with about three million inhabitants. Results and Conclusions The proposed framework has shown a satisfying flexibility, as well as a good ability in reproducing real data. It seems to be a good compromise between accuracy and operative issues, which improves the range of reproducible mobility phenomena and the accuracy of this reproduction and at the same time it moves some step forward the practical applicability of activity-based approaches.