ABM long-term location choices

The ABM long-term location choices procedure is part of the ABM model type fully integrated in Visum for calculating disaggregated demand. It sets individual destinations for recurring compulsory activities such as work or school. The destinations are chosen once per person and are thus already fixed as a destination for corresponding activities.

The methodology is identical to that of the ABM Nested Demand procedure. A schedule of the type Home-X-Home is calculated for each person, where X is the activity for which a long-term location choice is made.

In contrast to the ABM Nested Demand procedure, the choice is not made per activity execution, but per person. This is important because, for example, not all people who have a job also carry out a corresponding work activity (e.g. on vacation). In addition, for more short-term scenarios (e.g., the temporary closure of a road), the workplace can be kept constant.

As the basis of the choice process is no longer the activity execution, but the person, some attribute interfaces change: While in the ABM Nested Demand procedure attributes of the activity execution can be used, in the ABM long-term location choices procedure these are attributes of the person. This applies in particular to the start time, which is not defined for a specific execution, but can be generally interpreted as a reference time for a long-term location choice. For this reason, the same time is usually used here for all persons (with a comparable occupation).

The procedure uses the same individual preferences as the ABM Nested Demand procedure.