The development of an adapted Markov chain modelling heuristic and simulation framework in the context of transportation research

In order to test the validity of the heuristic, new data is simulated and compared with the original observed data. The new data is generated by means of Monte Carlo simulation and the empirically derived information from the codebooks is used as a constraint in the simulations. In order to make a mature evaluation of the simulated diaries, different performance indicators were considered by using pattern-, trip- and activity-level measures. It is shown in the paper that the results are satisfactory and that the framework that was developed holds out considerable promise; both for gaining behavioural decision making insights and for simulating activity diary data that can assist practitioners and researchers in the calibration of travel demand models.