Integrated Land Use, Transportation, and Environmental Simulation

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1 UrbanSim Integrated Land Use, Transportation, and Environmental Simulation Bjorn Freeman-Benson Center for Urban Simulation and Policy Analysis Dept of Computer Science & Engineering University of Washington Seattle, USA

2 Outline Why this problem is important and why it is hard How Open Source helps Technical overview of the UrbanSim system How all of this relates to Eclipse 2

3 What s at Stake? Urban land use and transportation critical for: Economic health Livability and community Sustainability Land use and transportation interact Just planning transportation systems without considering their land use effects ignores this linkage Both land use and transportation have strong environmental impacts Resource consumption (water, energy, ) Air and water pollution Loss of open space and habitat Global warming 3

4 U.S. Context: Traffic Congestion and Other Priorities Traffic congestion an issue almost everywhere High costs of transport infrastructure Reduced financial capacity to fund capacity Increased opposition to road expansion Auto-dependent land use and auto use mutually reinforcing But is increasingly competing against other priorities Concerns over unchecked sprawl, damage to community, loss of open space and biodiversity Air and water quality concerns Concerns over reliance on foreign oil Desire for more diverse housing and transportation choices Concerns about social equity Public participation in decisionmaking Intense, often intractable conflicts over core values 4

5 Worldwide Context A major issue in many countries not just a US problem A few examples: Debates in Europe about automobileoriented infrastructure vs. transit Massive road construction programs in Beijing Great controversy in Melbourne, Australia about recent and proposed highway projects 5

6 Using Models in Urban Planning Integrated land use and transportation models can provide an important tool for exploring policy alternatives and possible urban futures What if? We built a new freeway or rail line and adopted policies to promote transit-oriented development? We established an urban growth boundary and zoned for increased density and mixed-use? We changed parking pricing, or adopted congestion pricing? Analogy: SimCity, but with requirements for realism Unfortunately, existing models are inadequate Modeling must be integrated with the political process 6

7 Why is Urban Modeling a Hard Problem? Cities are heterogeneous, complex, dynamic systems Many individual agents making choices: Households: residence location, workplace, auto ownership, travel mode, etc. Firms: size and location of employment Developers: when, what, and where to build Governments influence choices Infrastructure: roads, transit, water, sewer Public services: schools, public safety, parks Taxes and fees, subsidies Choices of agents interact Household location choices interact with auto ownership and travel patterns Households, firms and developers interact in markets Time frames of choices vary from minutes to years 7

8 Why is Urban Modeling a Hard Problem? (2) Aggregate general equilibrium and theoretical models limited in realism world is complex Disaggregate theory has been developed in piecemeal fashion Computing power, data and statistical tools had until recently been limiting constraints Problem domain is inherently interdisciplinary, and involves basic and applied research Difficulties in devising models that are clear behaviorally, understandable, and credible Political context adds to the difficulties: Local conflicts over land use, transportation and environment are based on deep value conflicts 8

9 The UrbanSim Approach Modeling: Identify stakeholder values, relevant problems, and policies Design model to be sensitive to these Use a transparent behavioral representation Microsimulate individual agents Use very disaggregate spatial units Dynamically simulate annual time steps Model market interactions Software Development: Use an agile software development methodology Engage model users as partners Software is under the GNU public license 9

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11 Research and Applied Research: Aggregated agent-based models Integrated models Environmental models Value sensitive design Applied: UrbanSim is a released product with real customers and real deadlines 11

12 UrbanSim Applications to Date Completed: Eugene/Springfield, Oregon Honolulu, Hawaii Houston, Texas Salt Lake City, Utah (version 1) Under way: Salt Lake City (version 2), as mandated by a court as part of the settlement of a lawsuit Puget Sound Region (Seattle and neighboring cities) Paris, France (group proceeding largely independently) 12

13 Wasatch Front Region Case Study Controversial freeway project ( Legacy Highway ) north of Salt Lake City, through wetlands adjacent to The Salt Lake Lawsuits Sierra Club and Utahns for Better Transportation Highway construction halted by court (Clean Water Act violations) Long range plan analysis Technical analysis challenged Lawsuit settled: Test UrbanSim for suitability for use, with peer review to be completed by 12/31/03 13

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15 UrbanSim Data Integration Process Input Data Data Store Parcel file Households Grid Cell Business Establishment File Census PUMS, STF3 Environmental UGB City County Traffic Zone Data Integration Process HouseholdID Persons Workers Children Age of Head Income GridId Jobs JobID Sector GridId GridId Total Housing Units Vacant Housing Units Total Nonres Sqft Vacant Nonres Sqft Development Type Land Value Residential Imp Value Nonres Imp Value Environ Overlays UGB City County Traffic Zone 15

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18 Key Model Components Household and Employment Location Multinomial logit Grid cell is choice outcome Individual household or job is unit of analysis Real Estate Development Multinomial logit 24 development type outcomes Grid cell is unit of analysis Real Estate Price Estimation Hedonic regression Grid cell is unit of analysis Transport Model (currently external) 18

19 Residential Location Influences Housing Characteristics Prices (interacted with income) Development types (density, land use mix) Housing age Regional accessibility (from travel model) Job accessibility by auto-ownership group Travel time to CBD and airport Urban design-scale (localized spatial queries) Neighborhood land use mix and density Neighborhood employment 19

20 Audience Participation Slide Conference Seating Model What are the variables? 20

21 Audience Participation Slide Conference Seating Model What are the variables? Possibilities: Proximity to door Proximity to speaker Proximity to power outlet Aisle vs interior seat Nearby empty seats Nearby friends 21

22 Audience Participation Slide Variables characteristics of chair Coefficients factors of individuals Utility of a chair j = i variables α i v ij Probability of a chair = u j / k u k Chair choice = random selection from probability distribution 22

23 COMPARATIVE STATISTICS: HOUSEHOLD GROWTH SHARE BY REGIONAL ANALYSIS ZONE FORT BEND COUNTY, TX 0-1.5% 1.5-3% 3-6% 6-10% 10-16% SIMULATED GROWTH SHARE CENSUS GROWTH SHARE

24 All Open Process Given the high stakes and pressures of urban planning, reliable, high-quality, credible software is essential. Polarized debate Entrenched stakeholder groups To help establish credibility, repeatable high quality is also essential. Open Source, Code, Design & Process 24

25 Traffic Light With information radiators, the passersby don t need to ask questions; the information simply hits them in the face. [Cockburn 2002] Immediate effect on the project 25

26 Value Sensitive Design An approach to the design of technology that accounts for human values in a principled and comprehensive manner throughout the design process Technology not viewed as value-neutral A research topic in its own right; also cuts across the other research areas 26

27 Value Sensitive Design (2) Tripartite methodology: Conceptual analysis of the values involved in the project Technical investigations of existing and new technical mechanisms and their suitability to support or not support the values we wish to further Empirical investigations of who the stakeholders are, which values are important to different stakeholders, and how they prioritize them 27

28 Values Examples from Urban Simulation Is the model a black box? Implicated values: democracy, accountability Can you model walking as a transportation mode? (Doing so is technically more difficult than modeling driving because of scale and neighborhood characteristics.) How do you value people s time? Can you answer questions about resource consumption and sustainability? 28

29 Applying VSD to UrbanSim Conceptual Investigations How do we deal with the multitude of strongly held and often conflicting values held by different stakeholders? We distinguish: Explicitly supported values Stakeholder values 29

30 Explicitly Supported Values These are taken as given, and are explicitly supported by the system as well as possible Principal values: Support for democratic process Provide infrastructure that allows users to articulate and investigate values that are of greatest importance to them Fairness (and specifically freedom from bias) As far as we are able, do not privilege one mode of transportation, policy, etc over another Openness and accountability 30

31 Example Stakeholder Values Clean air Economic growth Housing affordability Individual property rights Low taxes Open space preservation Social equity Transportation options for disabled people Walkable neighborhoods 31

32 Stakeholder Values (2) Stakeholder values may be in conflict A particular choice or weighting of these values should not be built into the system Being able to answer questions about certain stakeholder values may have significant design implications (e.g. biodiversity) If a significant number of stakeholders care about a value, or if it has moral import, we want to try to provide indicators for it 32

33 Applying VSD to UrbanSim Technical Investigations Huge amount of work on new and improved component models Done in response to policy questions of interest to local governments or advocacy groups (thus in support of the value of democracy), or to improve accuracy and reliability (in support of credibility) User interface work on evaluation tools Open Source and agile processes to support reliability and credibility 33

34 UI Work - Supporting Stakeholders in Evaluating Alternative Scenarios Provide indicators that can give a quantitative assessment of how well a given value is supported in a scenario, e.g., freight mobility, housing affordability Running a simulation Visualizing indicator output 34

35 Eclipse Provides the User Interface 35

36 UrbanSim Eclipse Simulation engine Eclipse UI Project, resources, workbench, wizards, editors, views, updater, etc. UrbanSim JUMP, Open Office, Visualization and analysis 36

37 UrbanSim Eclipse Debugging Eclipse JDT UI UrbanSim Because the simulator is a separate process, we shouldn t need the PDE for debugging. 37

38 UrbanSim Eclipse Debugging Eclipse Eclipse (RTW) UI UrbanSim PDE JDT In reality, we debug two processes at the same time using the PDE and JDT. 38

39 An UrbanSim-in-Eclipse Issue Eclipse doesn t provide much support for launching a separate partially- Eclipse/non-Eclipse process UrbanSim UI is one plug-in UrbanSim simulator is another (non UI) plug-in When the ui launches the separate process, how does the ui code determine the classpath, e.g., is the simulator code in a jar file or in class files? 39

40 An UrbanSim-in-Eclipse Issue URL url = plugin.find(new Path( UrbanSim.jar )); if (url!= null) { File jar = new File(url.getPath()); if (jar.exists()) { IPath path = new Path(url.getPath()); IRuntimeClasspathEntry entry = JavaRuntime.newArchiveRuntimeClasspathEntry(path); classpath.add(entry.getmemento()); } else { File bin = new File(UrbanSimPlugin.getDefault().get_plugin_install_path() + "/bin/"); if (bin.exists()) { IPath path = new Path(bin.getPath()); IRuntimeClasspathEntry entry = JavaRuntime.newArchiveRuntimeClasspathEntry(path); classpath.add(entry.getmemento()); 40

41 Another UrbanSim-in-Eclipse Issue Completing the install Eclipse does this for itself, but this feature is not provided for plug-ins We needed to complete the install by creating command line scripts for running UrbanSim with all required jars, etc. Solution: we create the scripts the first time our plug-in is initialized, i.e., Plugin.startUp() 41

42 An UrbanSim-in-Eclipse Positive Users extend UrbanSim by adding Variables (Java classes) Models (Java classes) Indicators (XML files) Extensions work nicely for this: org.urbansim.plugin.contributions Builds class and search paths for simulator 42

43 In Conclusion Urban simulation is an interesting and important application We re pleased to be able to spend our time on modeling and indicators not designing and implementing infrastructure. We re not an IDE, but we are IDE-like and thus Eclipse is a powerful effort multiplier for our project. 43

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46 Historical Validation from : Correlation of Simulated vs Observed 1994 Eugene-Springfield, Oregon Cell Zone 1-Cell Radius Employment Population Nonresidential Sq ft Housing Units Land Value

47 SIMULATED HOUSEHOLDS FORT BEND COUNTY, TX BY GRID CELLS (1000X1000 FT)

48 Employment Location Influences Real Estate Characteristics Prices Development type (land use mix, density) Regional accessibility Access to population Travel time to CBD, airport Urban design-scale Proximity to highway, arterials Local agglomeration economies within & between sectors: center formation 48

49 Real Estate Development Influences Site characteristics Existing development characteristics Land use plan Environmental constraints Urban design-scale Proximity to highway and arterials Proximity to existing development Neighborhood land use mix and property values Recent development in neighborhood Regional Access to population and employment Travel time to CBD, airport Vacancy rates 49

50 Land Price Influences Site characteristics Development type Land use plan Environmental constraints Regional accessibility Access to population and employment Urban design-scale Land use mix and density Proximity to highway and arterials Vacancy rates 50

51 UI Work - Supporting Stakeholders in Evaluating Alternative Scenarios Provide indicators that can give a quantitative assessment of how well a given value is supported in a scenario Examples: Energy consumption per capita; percentage of energy from renewable resources; greenhouse gas emissions per capita Amount of open space Biodiversity indicators (e.g. of native bird diversity) Space available for business expansion Freight mobility Housing affordability index 51

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