The planned introduction of information technologies into the transport environment has renewed the interest of policy makers in comprehensive transport modelling frameworks. It has been recognised that frameworks suitable for the description of travel behaviour in an information-rich environment have to go beyond the current modelling frameworks. This paper presents the modelling framework developed by the EUROTOPP consortium to address the questions raised by an information-rich environment. The proposed framework is in its core a dynamic, activity-oriented and information-sensitive microscopic simulation model. A sample of simulated households is used to model the evolution of travel behaviour in daily, medium-term and longer term time frames. Decision making is handled at distinct points in time, called 'events'; this allows for effects over time such as diffusion, delay, memory, search and full or partial information. These procedures have been converted into algorithms suitable for programming which has now started. It is designed for use on a workstation (or powerful PC), using the UNIX operating system. It is being implemented in C++ under X-Window with MOTIF as the graphical interface.
Samenvatting