Population Synthesis for Microsimulation: State of the Art

In agent-based microsimulation models for land use or transportation planning, agents' decisions are simulated over time in order to predict future states of the system. The initial step is the definition of agents -- e.g., persons and households. If a snapshot of the entire population of the study area, taken at the simulation's base year, were on hand, one could use this as an initial condition. Unfortunately, such data is often not available due to privacy and cost constraints. To tackle this issue, one can combine different data sources to derive a disaggregate representation of the agents, matching given criteria like correlation structure and control totals. This process is referred to as population synthesis. The authors summarize recent efforts to generate synthetic populations for microsimulation. All of the aforementioned studies share two tasks: (a) adjustment of an initial population, taken from a past census or other survey data, to current constraints, and (b) selecting households into the generated population. The authors describe the above tasks, and analyze and evaluate the characteristics of the particular approaches. This digest will hopefully be helpful for the implementation of future population synthesis routines.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Müller, Kirill
  • Axhausen, Kay W
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 90th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2011-1-23 to 2011-1-27
• Date: 2011

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: DVD
• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: 21p
• Monograph Title: TRB 90th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Data collection; Land use planning; Microsimulation; Population; State of the art; Surveys; Transportation planning
• Uncontrolled Terms: Agent based models; Population synthesis
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01340154
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 11-1789
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: May 18 2011 11:21AM