Michael Löchl

Institute for Transport Planning and Systems (IVT)July 2005

Modelling businesses and employment:UrbanSim and its application in Zurich

Workshop of Land Use Transportation (LUT) Modelling Group, London

Project Overview

ETH Research Focus „The Future of Urbanized Landscapes“ is funded by

• ETH Zurich• Swiss Federal Office for Spatial Development

Involved people within project:• Prof. Kay W. Axhausen (IVT, ETH Zurich)• Prof. Willy Schmid (IRL, ETH Zurich)• Michaela Bürgle (IRL/IVT, ETH Zurich)• Michael Löchl (IVT, ETH Zurich)• Urs Waldner (IRL, ETH Zurich)

• Prof. Paul Waddell (U. of Washington)

Project overview

Stage 1• Applying UrbanSim in the Greater Zurich area• Loosely coupled with transport models of Canton Zurich

Stage 2• Adjustment/ expansion of model system

– Introducing transport network with flows and volume– Introduce impacts of traffic noise and road pricing on

location choice• Analysing case studies

Simulation area

Germany

Project Schedule

2005: Household survey in Greater Zurich area

Model estimations

First simulation runs for 1990 to 2000 for validation purposes

2006: Adjustment and development of new simulation modules

Running case studies

End of project: beginning of 2007

Data sources and estimations

• Employer counts per sector from national statistics both at - municipality level (90, 95/96, 98, 00/01)

and - hectar raster level (95/96, 98, 00/01)• Employer forecasts are available from Canton Zurich

• Simple disaggregation measures where needed• Adjustments needed for small businesses (1-3 employees)

based on their spatial distribution• Overall input data quality can be judged as good

• Employment movement probabilities are required

Firmography in UrbanSim

• Early UrbanSim version tried to consider firmography, but failed

• Developers are aware of the problems => abstraction as solution

• Forecasts of sectoral employment has to be provided externaly

• Single jobs are considered as entities, sectors can be defined

• Employment losses are assumed to be proportional to spatial distribution of jobs in the sector

• Takeovers are not considered

Influence of endogenous variables on employment change in UrbanSim

• Location choice/ probability to locate elsewhere is determined by– Availability of space– Land price (Land price model)– Local agglomerations– Accessibility to population (accessibility model)– Travel time to CBD, airport (transport model)

• But job losses are assumed to be proportional to the spatial distribution of jobs in the sector

UrbanSim – Framework with regard to employment

Model Coordinator

Travel Model

AccessibilityModel

Export Model

Economic TransitionModel

Land Price Model

Employment Mobility Model

Employment Location Choice

Model

Real Estate Development Model

Data

Employment base year and forecasts (control totals)

Input

Treatment of Location/ Relocation in UrbanSim

• Economic Transition Model calculates creation/loss of jobs• Employment Mobility Model calculates which jobs have to

be relocated• Employment Location Model (re-)locates jobs by randomly

selecting a predetermined amount of potential available spaces and decides by discrete choice model (MNL) where to locate

• Stock of available space is fixed in short-term • Locators are price takers

Treatment of interaction between firms

• Only considered in location choice model by taking into account employment mix within a specific radius of potential location

URLs

Zurich Project Homepage:

http://www.nsl.ethz.ch/index.php/en/content/view/full/942

UrbanSim Homepage:

http://www.urbansim.org