Household Evolution Model Development for SCAG Activity Based Model

(PI: Kostas Goulias; Co-PIs: Chandra Bhat, Ram Pendyala)

Dr. Bhat serves as a Co-PI for this Southern California Association of Governments funded project, in collaboration with Dr. Kostas Goulias (University of California Santa Barbara - Lead) and Dr. Ram Pendyala (Arizona State University). This project aims at enhancing population synthesis using household evolution concepts that move each household from one year to the next through life cycle stage transitions. In this way, time-space traces of a variety of policy related variables of individuals and households as well as the entire SCAG population can be developed and studied in more detail. Policy actions can then be examined in terms of their speed of market penetration and household adaptation by a variety of market segments almost at will. To accomplish this objective a dynamic population synthesis method and software are needed. The intended software will be self standing and capable to interface with other land use and travel demand models developed by SCAG. The output of the software will be used for population analysis, as input to the trip-based models of SCAG, and in tandem with PopGen and the new versions of the CEMSELTS/CEMDAP software that are modified to create an activity-based model system known as SimAGENT. At the end of this project SCAG will receive an integrated spatial microsimulator that can be used for SimAGENT application and a variety of other trip-based applications.