Week-long activity-based modelling: a review of the existing models and datasets and a comprehensive conceptual framework

Abstract

Activity-based travel demand models emerged mainly to fix the conceptual, statistical, and operational deficiencies of conventional trip-based models. This is done by microstimulating the activity scheduling behaviour of individuals/households instead of modelling the number of trips between the zones of an urban area. In the “Next Generation” of activity-based models (ABMs), researchers are making an effort to improve their capacity to replicate the travel-activity patterns of urban populations more realistically. Expanding the modelling time frame from a single day to an entire week is one of the essential aspects of the “Next Generation” of ABMs. Although there is still a long way to go before a comprehensive and operational week-long ABM can be developed, the literature on its different aspects, the theoretical and conceptual frameworks, and the efforts to collect multi-day travel-activity diaries are now at a stage that is worth a comprehensive and systematic review. Therefore, the current study is devoted to exploring the existing literature on multi-day activity-based modelling, categorising its elements in a systematic manner, searching for the research gaps in the existing models and proposing a comprehensive framework to fill those gaps.