A synthetic population for the greater São Paulo metropolitan region

Abstract

This paper presents an open-source generalized pipeline for the creation of a synthetic population for the Greater São Paulo Metropolitan Region, entirely based on open data. The pipeline that is first developed and applied to the Île-de-France region is used as a baseline. Using data-driven algorithms, the pipeline creates a path from raw data to the synthetic population and, further, to the final mobility scenario. A definite advantage of this approach is that it enables to easily reproduce not only synthetic populations, but also to reproduce transportation studies. The São Paulo’s synthetic population, that comprises of as many agents as there are inhabitants in this area, is created using this framework and then analyzed. All considered indicators suggest that this approach is able to model the population on a high level, even if certain gaps could be filled with additional information.