My research on urban and transport modelling started with the development of Land-Use Transport-Interaction (LUTI) models, Demographic Forecasting models and Land Development models within the HARMONY Project.
HARMONY is an EU Horizon 2020 project that envisions a holistic approach for providing spatial and transport planning tools and evidence to metropolitan and regional authorities to lead a sustainable transition to a new mobility era.
UCL CASA led Work Package 4: Land-Use, Spatial Planning and Strategic Decisions.
We developed spatial urban models for 3 case studies:
- Oxfordshire (UK)
- Turin (Italy)
- Athens (Greece)
LUTI models are cross-sectional spatial models that aim at capturing people flows among or within regions or metropolitan areas within different daily activities (like journey to work, retail centres, hospitals, schools etc.) and by different mode of transport (e.g. car, bus, rail etc.). Here is a paper containing more details on these LUTI models.
Demographic Forecasting models provide information regarding both aggregated and disaggregated future population projections within the study area and considering exogenous migration flows.
Land Development models consist of GIS layers that translate physical land development features into constraints and mathematical functions to provide accessibility and suitability indicators for spatial interaction applications.
If you want to know more, take a look at this paper on land-use transport-interaction modelling, or this other one on a land development model.
Beyond HARMONY, I have been co-supervising (together with Mike Batty and Jens Kandt) an amazing PhD student: Zhixuan (Willow) Liu, who has taken a step forwad and is working on coupling LUTI models with quantitative spatial economic models (QSM) to capture wider economic impacts of large infrastructure projects. We are working on several interesting stuff that will be published soon, if you are curious, take a look at this conference paper on Modeling approaches to assess the impacts oflarge transport infrastructure.