Investigating micro-simulation error in activity-based travel demand forecasting: a case study of the FEATHERS framework

Activity-based models of travel demand have received considerable attention in transportation planning and forecasting in recent years. However, in most cases they use a micro-simulation approach, thereby inevitably including a stochastic error that is caused by the statistical distributions of random components. As a consequence, running a transport micro-simulation model several times with the same input will generate different outputs, which baffles practitioners in applying such a model and in interpreting the results. A common approach is therefore to run the model multiple times and to use the average value of the results. The question then becomes: what is the minimum number of model runs required to reach a stable result? In this paper, systematic experiments are carried out using Forecasting Evolutionary Activity-Travel of Households and their Environmental RepercussionS (FEATHERS), an activity-based micro-simulation modelling framework currently implemented for the Flanders region of Belgium. Six levels of geographic detail are taken into account. Three travel indices – average daily activities per person, average daily trips per person and average daily distance travelled per person, as well as their corresponding segmentations – are calculated by running the model 100 times. The results show that the more disaggregated the level, the larger the number of model runs is needed to ensure confidence. Furthermore, based on the time-dependent origin-destination table derived from the model output, traffic assignment is performed by loading it onto the Flemish road network, and the total vehicle kilometres travelled in the whole Flanders are subsequently computed. The stable results at the Flanders level provides model users with confidence that application of FEATHERS at an aggregated level requires only limited model runs.