Working Papers/Reports

This paper exploits the randomness and exogeneity of weather conditions to identify the economic cost of decarbonization through renewable energy (RE) support policies. We find that both the aggregate cost and the distribution of cost between energy producers and consumers vary significantly depending on which type of RE technology is promoted—reflecting substantial heterogeneity in production cost, temporal availability of natural ...

Working Paper

Semi-Flexible Majority Rules for Public Good Provision

Gersbach, Hans; Tejada, Oriol (2017)

Working paper / CER-ETH

We introduce a two-stage, multiple-round voting procedure where the thresholds needed for approval require a qualified majority and vary with the proposal on the table. We apply such a procedure to instances of public-good provision where the citizens’ valuations can take two values and are private. We show that the procedure elicits and aggregates the information about the valuations and implements the utilitarian optimal public good ...

Working Paper

Using a realistic social network to improve leisure destination choice simulation

Dubernet, Thibaut (2017)

Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und Raumplanung

In developed countries, in the last years, a continuous increase of the share of trips that are performed for leisure purposes could be observed. Various data sources further indicate that the most important motivation behind out-of-home leisure activities is social contact. On the other side, leisure remains very hard to model in simulation models, mainly because it depends highly on characteristics that are difficult to observe, such ...

Working Paper

Free Surface Water Flows - Modeling, Simulation and Control

Glattfelder, Adolf Hermann (2017)

Upstream and downstream channels are the key subsystems for the design of level/ flow control loops in run-of-river hydropower plants. Their dynamic response is notoriously complex, exhibiting low frequency resonance with weak damping, travelling waves, both sub- and supercritical flow, hydraulic jumps, etc. Part one of this report provides mathematical models derived from the basic physical conservation laws of mass and momentum (Reynolds ...

Report

Comparing short- and long-term values of travel time savings derived from a joint modelling framework

Dubernet, Ilka; Dubernet, Thibaut; Axhausen, Kay W. (2017)

Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und Raumplanung

The value of travel time is an important element of cost-benefit analysis for appraisal of trans- portation project, by encapsulating the willingness to pay of the population for improvements in the transport system. Those values are typically obtained from mobility choice data, in the form of revealed or stated preference surveys. Although short term decisions, such as route and mode choice, are typically used for this purpose, a growing ...

Working Paper

Mean speed prediction with endogenous volume and spatial autocorrelation: A Swiss case study

Sarlas, Georgios; Axhausen, Kay W. (2017)

Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und Raumplanung

In the present paper a modeling approach to address the issue of mean speed prediction on a large scale network is presented. Methodologically, we exploit the family of spatial regression models to treat both for the spatial dependence and the endogeneity aspect between speed and volume. The estimation of the model takes place by means of a 2-step instrumental variables- generalized method of moments estimator, allowing us to obtain ...

Working Paper

Towards the integration of aerial transportation in urban settings

Balac, Milos; Vetrella, Amedeo R.; Axhausen, Kay W. (2017)

Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und Raumplanung

The idea of flying has always fascinated mankind. A century ago it became a reality when in 1914 the first commercial flight was offered. In recent times, many entities are planning, developing and testing aerial vehicles and systems that will move goods and people in urban scenarios. Consequently, the need to develop appropriate planning tools for this kind of transportation is needed. This paper presents some of the important research ...

Working Paper

Introducing a re-sampling methodology for the estimation of empirical macroscopic fundamental diagrams

Ambühl, Lukas; Loder, Allister; Bliemer, Michiel C.J.; et al. (2017)

Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und Raumplanung

The uncertainty in the estimation of the macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD) under real- world traffic conditions and urban dynamics, might result in an inaccurate estimation of the MFD parameters - especially if congestion is rarely observed network-wide. For example, if the observed data does not exhibit a distinct congested branch, it is hard to determine the network capacity and critical density. Similarly, as the data normally comes ...

Working Paper