Data-driven Activity Scheduler for Agent-Based Mobility Models

Activity-based modelling is a modern agent-based approach to travel demand modelling, in which the transport demand is derived from the agent's needs to perform certain activities at specific places and times. The agent's mobility is considered in a broader context, which allows the activity-based models to produce more realistic trip chains, compared to traditional trip based models. The core of any activity-based model is an activity scheduler - a software component producing sequences of agent's daily activities interconnected by trips, called activity schedules. Traditionally, activity schedulers used to rely heavily on hard-coded knowledge of transport behaviour experts. We introduce the concept of a Data-Driven Activity Scheduler (DDAS), which replaces numerous expert-designed components and their intricately engineered interactions with a collection of machine learning models. Its architecture is significantly simpler, making it easier to deploy and maintain. This shift towards data-driven, machine learning based approach is possible due to increased availability of mobility-related data. We demonstrate DDAS concept using our own proof-of-concept implementation, perform a rigorous analysis and compare the validity of the resulting model to one of the rule-based alternatives using the Validation Framework for Activity-Based Models (VALFRAM).