Transportation Engineering @ UToronto

Sara Metcalf (my adviser) gave a talk on sprawl and agent based models in the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Toronto last week, and I tagged along so I could partake in the following group discussion (and because it gave me an excuse to go to Toronto).

I came away very impressed by what the group there, under the direction of Eric Miller, was doing. Particularly of interest to me was the work they are doing with their ILUTE (Integrated Land Use Transportation Environment) Modeling System.

In order to evaluate larger transportation issues in the greater Toronto metropolitan area the group has spent a fair amount of time and energy on understanding broader social issues that invariably have significant effects on how and why people move and travel. However, because they have managed to create a microsimulation modeling environment that can handle, computationally, an urban area as large as Toronto, my impression is that some of the behavioral models have been greatly simplified (i.e. a marriage/divorce market). I'd like to learn more about how that, and other, behavioral factors are programmed - and perhaps it would be beneficial to look into developing a more complex behavioral model at a smaller scale (say, just a portion of the Toronto area).

Check out their site here: http://www.civil.engineering.utoronto.ca/research/transport/subpages/ilute.htm