Surrogate-based simulation optimization approach for day-to-day dynamics model calibration with real data

Abstract This paper investigates the day-to-day dynamics model from the perspective of travelers’ actual route choice behaviors, and calibrates and validates the route-based day-to-day dynamics model with the real-world license plate recognition (LPR) data. Due to the highly nonlinear and multi-modal response function in the calibration of the optimization problem, traditional gradient-based nonlinear regression algorithms or other analytical optimization approaches are inapplicable to deal with the calibration work. In this paper, a surrogate-based simulation optimization approach is proposed to deal with the expensive-to-evaluate response function in the day-to-day dynamics calibration work. More specifically, the kriging metamodel is adopted to surrogate the optimization function of the calibration process. With this meta-modeling approach, a sound solution can be achieved with only a few sampling points in a comfortably afforded computation burden, thus giving a valid estimation of the parameters in the day-to-day dynamics model. Finally, a case study based on the real-world LPR data is conducted to validate the proposed model and calibration method.