Read agenda generated from an external source

[tpgjs66]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently any population generated from an external source can be read if they are listed in a csv file. However, activity agenda can be only generated by the synthetic agenda generator. Would it be possible to read in an activity agenda generated from an external source (e.g., activity-based transport demand model or activity-travel diary data)?

Describe the solution you'd like
Activity agenda in an activity-travel diary format can be read in by COMOKIT in accordance with the population.

Describe alternatives you've considered
For the initialization of the agenda, users may choose between reading an agenda file (if any) or generating the agenda by the synthetic agenda generator.

Additional context
Since the activity-travel diary data is being collected annually by most countries, and it has been utilized as a basis of agent-based modeling, it would be nice to have such a module not only for COMOKIT but also for GAMA as a general plugin.

[chapuisk]

Dear @tpgjs66 ,
Thanks a lot considering raising this issue. Indeed, it would be a very important addition. We'll definitly have a look and as of now the most important difficulty to do so pertain to the format to be used. It seems from my personal experience with travel data, that standards are not sufficiently supported: e.g. the last "time use survey" from european program available for French is more than 20 years old...
You were talking about activity-travel diary format: is there any international standard (if so can you provide a link) ? Is there a centralized databased ? Is this accessable through web, file or data based ? In the meantime, i'll have a look to the data you provided privatly and get back to you.
Best,
Kevin

[tpgjs66]

Dear Kevin,
Yes you are correct. Unfortunately, I think there is no single standard format so far for the activity-travel diary, which may hamper the generalization of the module development. The activity-travel diary refers to a travel survey diary combined with the information of an activity. Usually time use data has a comparably small sample size but a longer time span. So modellers are more stick to the activity-travel diary data (for more info).

National travel survey data of some countries is available as below.

US
UK
Netherlands (requires permission)

Categories for activity type and transport mode can be differ by countries. Spatial unit and date/time format are also different. But I think the basic idea remains same, which is to collect the following items by activity agenda each row.

• Activity type
• Activity location
• Activity start time
• Activity end time
• Travel time (or travel distance)
• Main transport mode used
• With whom traveled (optional)

The output format of the activity-based transport demand model is in line with that of the collected activity-travel data since the goal of the model is to replicate travel behavior of individuals learned from the data.

Best regards,
Seheon