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Alan Borning
Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering |
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Paul Waddell
Evans School of Public Affairs and
Dept. of Urban Design & Planning |
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Graduate Students: |
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Michael Noth |
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L. Denise Pinnel |
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Current & Former Undergraduate Students: |
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Michael Becke |
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Nathan Freier |
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Robin Cole |
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Patterns of land use and transportation are
critical in determining economic vitality, livability, and sustainability
of urban areas |
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Land use and transportation interact with each
other and with the environment. |
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Example: Suppose you were a Puget Sound resident
in the early 1960s. Three
alternative transportation plans are proposed. |
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a freeway-oriented system |
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a rail-oriented system |
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do nothing |
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We might want to ask questions such as: |
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What will the region look like in the year 2000
under these different scenarios? |
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How will people and goods move around? |
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What will be the density and character of
development? |
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How much open space will there be? |
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What will be the environmental impacts on air
and water quality? |
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Eugene/Springfield, Oregon (including historical
validation — started with 1980 data and predicted state in 1995) |
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Salt Lake City |
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Honolulu |
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now working on Puget Sound (substantially larger
area than the others) |
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Written in the Java programming language (about
200,000 lines, plus 100,000 more lines of Java that is automatically
generated) |
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Software is under the GNU Public License (so
it’s free, and freely redistributable) |
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We have made an initial release of the system,
with several hundred downloads |
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UrbanSim is composed of interacting models that
simulate particular aspects of the urban environment |
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Demographics (people moving in and out of the
area, births and deaths) |
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Residential location choice |
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Business location choice |
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Transportation |
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… |
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Geographic information is of the essence! |
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UrbanSim currently represents a region using a
2-dimensional grid. |
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Analogy: Game of Life grid |
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Each grid cell is 150 meters square |
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Grid cell attributes include: |
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Building type, square feet |
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Number of residents |
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Number of employees (for businesses) |
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etc |
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As with most simulations, UrbanSim keeps track
of simulated time |
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There is a global variable currentYear |
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Analogy: “stepCount” in Game of Life |
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Typical simulation is run for 20 years |
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Most models run once each simulated year |
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Handles initialization of models |
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Coordinates execution of all models |
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Notifies models of updates |
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For example, the Land Developer model might
build some new houses. |
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The Model Coordinator notifies the Residential
Location Choice model that new housing is available. |
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Notes