Target driven activity planning

Abstract

This paper proposes a microscopic travel demand simulation that employs a continuous planning approach with an open time horizon. It uses behavioral targets and the concept of projects to model people’s motivation to execute activities. People’s behavior originates from a planning heuristic making on the fly decisions about upcoming activities. The planning heuristic bases its decisions on the available activity execution options in the near planning future, its current execution effectiveness and on a discomfort measure derived from deviations between people’s performance and their behavioral targets. We illustrate the model through several examples and suggest directions for future research.