Real-time tracking of activity scheduling/schedule execution within a unified data collection framework

One of the major foci in transport research is the identification of the temporal–spatial decision making structure embedded in activity scheduling and its linkage to actual activity execution. The latter part of the research in question has not been explored explicitly in real life situations due to the lack of effective data collection means. This paper presents a real-time activity scheduling, activity/travel survey system that incorporates the extraction of activity scheduling and the execution information within one unified data collection framework. These “revealed” data can be used for explicitly defining the mechanism of how people’s activity schedules dynamically adapt to social-demographic and temporal–spatial constraints and finally lead to the observed activity-travel patterns.