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ABSTRACT

We introduce ActivitySim, a simulator that generates daily activities for a population of millions of individual agents, each characterized by a set of demographic attributes that is based on US census data. The daily schedules for each agent that consist of a sequence of typical activities, such as sleeping, shopping, working etc., with their respecting starting and ending times. Further, each of the scheduled activities is geo-located at an appropriate location for the type of activity and for the personal situation of the agent, like a business or private residence. ActivitySim has been developed as part of a larger effort to understand the interdependencies among national infrastructure networks and their demand profiles that emerge from the different activities of individuals in both baseline as well as emergency scenarios, such as hurricane evacuations. We present the scalable software engineering principles underlying ActivitySim, the socio-technical modeling paradigms that drive the activity generation, and proof-of-principle results for a 2.6 M agent scenario in the Twin Cities, MN, area.

REFERENCES

• 1: PRIME. Parallel Real-time Immersive Modeling Environment (PRIME). http://lynx.cis.fiu.edu:8000/twiki/bin/view/Public/PRIMEProject.
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• 9: Vhang-Hyeon Joh, Theo A. Arentze and Harry J. P. Timmermans. Understanding activity scheduling and rescheduling behaviour: Theory and numerical illustration. GeoJournal, 53(4):359--371, Apr. 2001.
• 10: Roman Waupotitsch , Stephan Eidenbenz , James P. Smith , Lukas Kroc, Multi-scale integrated information and telecommunications system (MIITS): first results from a large-scale end-to-end network simulator, Proceedings of the 38th conference on Winter simulation, December 03-06, 2006, Monterey, California

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  J. Computer Applications
  J.4 SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
        I.2.11 Distributed Artificial Intelligence
            Subjects: Intelligent agents
  I.6 SIMULATION AND MODELING
      I.6.4 Model Validation and Analysis
      I.6.5 Model Development
          Subjects: Modeling methodologies

General Terms:
Design, Management, Performance, Theory