Doctoral Dissertation Research: Travel Determinants and Multi-scale Transferability of National Activity Patterns to Create Synthetic Populations

国土安全应用需要在时间和空间上进行精细的建模和仿真分辨率，以表示人类活动和旅行行为。例如，关键桥梁可以根据其对国家安全、经济活动和公共安全的重要性来确定为“关键”。或者，大型体育场馆、购物中心和办公大楼在使用时可能被认为是更重要的目标，但在它们空着的时候就不是了。运输分析仿真系统（transsims - lanl）是一种基于活动的运输建模系统，能够在包裹级位置之间以每秒为基础模拟网络中的个人移动。TRANSIMS-LANL的核心是“综合”时间表（计算机生成的个人和家庭活动的时间分配，如工作、休闲和旅行），这些时间表是根据活动/旅行日记制定的。所有基于活动的模拟，如transsims - lanl，都需要大量的数据来描述特定城市的人口流动。这些数据通常是通过活动/旅行日记收集的，受访者在日记中报告了他们在几天内的所有活动。虽然城市或小地区每七到十年进行一次自己的调查，但出去收集数据并准备建模是非常耗时的。为了及时对城市或大区域进行建模，需要一种新的方法，将一个人的活动模式“转移”给生活在不同地理位置的另一个人。在这项研究中，将制订一种方法，将活动模式从国家一级的旅行调查转移到地方一级的综合人口调查。这将通过注重土地利用和可达性来实现。将确定现有的和新的可达性和土地形态措施，并与社会人口变量一起应用于全国旅行调查的受访者，以建立结构方程模型（SEM）。这项研究的核心是关于旅行行为与土地利用、土地形态和可达性之间的联系的问题，这些问题将被探讨，以确定存在什么联系（如果存在的话）。在设计活动或旅行模式的可转移性过程时，建立这种联系是必不可少的。该研究对广泛的业务和研究应用具有潜在的好处。所有类型的调查，从与旅行有关的调查到获取个人健康状况的调查，管理起来既昂贵又耗时。利用来自一个或多个地区的调查来构建一个有效的调查的能力，立即允许研究或建模向前发展，将节省数千美元的成本和人力。这一方法可应用于规划和业务/管理中需要空间维度的所有领域，从保健到住房和城市发展，从纳税计算到交通拥堵和空气质量。在交通运输中，设计一个过程以使活动或旅行调查能够从一个地区转移到另一个地区的目的是帮助开发基于活动的交通模型。

Homeland security applications require fine modeling and simulation resolution in time and space to represent human activity and travel behavior. For example, key bridges might be identified as "critical" in terms of their importance to national security, economic activity, and public safety. Or, large sports stadiums, shopping malls, and office towers might be considered more of a substantial target when they are in use, but not when they are empty. The TRansporation ANalysis SIMulation System (TRANSIMS-LANL), an activity-based transportation modeling system, has the ability to simulate the movements of individuals around a network on a second-by-second basis between parcel-level locations. At the core of TRANSIMS-LANL are "synthetic" schedules (computer produced time allocations of individuals and households to activity such as work, leisure, and travel) which are formulated based on activity/travel diaries. All activity-based simulations like TRANSIMS-LANL require an immense amount of data to depict a specific city's population movements. The data are usually collected using activity/travel diaries in which respondents report all their activities over the span of a few days. While cities or small regions conduct their own surveys every seven to ten years, it is very time consuming to go out and collect data and prepare them for modeling. In order to model cities or large regions in a timely manner, a new methodology is needed that will allow a person's activity patterns to be "transferred" to another person living in a different geographic location. In this study, a methodology will be developed to transfer activity patterns from a national-level travel survey to a synthetic population at a local level. This will be accomplished by focusing on land use and accessibility. Existing and new accessibility and land form measures will be identified and applied along with socio-demographic variables for the respondents of a national travel survey to build a Structural Equation Model (SEM).At the core of this research are questions about the connection between travel behavior and land use, land form, and accessibility that will be explored to determine what link, if any, exists. This connection is essential to establish when designing a process for the transferability of activity or travel patterns. The study has potential benefits for a wide cross-section of operational and research applications. All types of surveys, ranging from travel-related to those that access a person's health, are costly and time-consuming to administer. The ability to utilize surveys from one or more regions to construct a valid survey that immediately allows research or modeling to move forward will save thousands of dollars in cost and person-time. This methodology can be applied in all areas that require a spatial dimension in planning and operations/management, from health care to housing and urban development, from tax contribution calculations to traffic congestion and air quality. Within transportation, the purpose of designing a process to enable the transferability of activity or travel surveys from one region to another is to aid in the development of activity-based transportation models.