"Developing Longitudinal Bottom-up Models of Land use, Transport and Energy Use"

This Discovery Grant proposal supports a long term research program at Dalhousie University in developing dynamic urban systems models by extending methods for longitudinal investigation of household-level location processes, automobile fleet choices, vehicle utilization and energy use. Households' location characteristics and travel behaviours are strongly related to energy consumption. The proposed research will extend our fundamental understanding of how households' location choice, mobility tool ownership, commuting behaviour and energy use evolve over life courses. Exploring continuity and history dependency in these critical choice and consumption processes is vital for developing improved dynamic bottom-up urban models. The research will focus specifically on two areas: longitudinal modelling of households' repeated choices, and the development of bottom-up integrated urban models. A multi-wave longitudinal data collection program will be employed for recording households' repeated long term choices, vehicle utilization and energy use. Successful adaptation of the applicant's current approach of repeated choice modelling for dealing with multi-dimensional choice processes will greatly improve behavioural realism and the demand forecasting ability of microsimulation-based integrated models. The research program will also investigate and model relationships between choice and consumption processes, utilizing follow up panel observations of vehicle utilization and energy use. These spatially and temporally disaggregate models will be used to develop a theoretically consistent bottom-up integrated modelling framework. A prototype microsimulation tool will be developed and tested for Halifax Metropolitan Area, Nova Scotia. One Ph.D. and two masters student will be trained through hands-on training in panel data collection, multivariate analysis, econometric modelling and microsimulation. Research involvement of a combination of urban planning and civil engineering students proposed in this program will offer an interdisciplinary research environment, fostering innovative approaches to the development of integrated models and their application for evaluating transportation and land use policies.