Planomat: A comprehensive scheduler for a large-scale multi-agent transportation simulation

Abstract

An external strategy module for an agent-based micro simulation of traffic systems is presented. This module called planomat modifies activity durations and departure times of activity plans, which are the agent-based representation of travel demand. The module combines broad search for alternative timing decisions with an optimization procedure for a scoring function that evaluates daily activity plans. The module is integrated into the existing framework MATSIM, which simulates traffic systems consisting of several 100’000 agents entirely on activity level. In this paper, a test version of the Canton Zurich is simulated, the biggest metropolitan area of Switzerland. Main results are relaxation of the whole simulation system to a better stationary state than in previous versions of the simulation framework. This is shown by departure/arrival time distributions. The number of required iterations was significantly reduced to 100, which is one-two orders of magnitude better than before.