Itzhak Benenson

Itzhak Benenson
Tel Aviv University | TAU · Geography and Human Environment

PhD

About

170
Publications
48,674
Reads
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4,975
Citations
Additional affiliations
November 1991 - present
Tel Aviv University
Position
  • Tel-Aviv University
Education
January 1981 - May 1984
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Field of study
  • Biophysics
September 1971 - July 1975
Ural Gorkij State University
Field of study
  • Mathematics, Algebra

Publications

Publications (170)
Article
Full-text available
Cities are so complex that we constantly build models to represent them, understand them and attempt to plan them. Models represent a middle ground between the singular configurations of cities and universal theories. This is what makes them valuable and prone to circulate (between places, institutions and languages) and evolve to adapt to new idea...
Article
The effectiveness of congestion charges and parking prices as monetary disincentives to reduce car traffic and alleviate congestion in highly demanded urban areas is investigated, focusing on Jerusalem's diverse and congested city center. A tailored MATSim agent-based simulation model was used to examine various payment scenarios and assess the con...
Article
Full-text available
Analyzing urban pattern dynamics based on construction projects, we classify them into three types - infilling, fringe, and leapfrogging, and focus on the role of leapfrogging projects as seeds for new developments, leading to uncontrolled urban sprawl. To study the leapfrogging phenomenon, we investigate the sprawl of three Israeli cities - Netany...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
We present a new approach to categorizing different types of urban development, namely infilling, fringe, and leapfrogging, based on construction projects as the fundamental unit of analysis. We focus on the role of the leapfrogging projects as seeds for new developments, leading to urban sprawl extending beyond statutory plans. To examine this phe...
Article
Public transportation (PT) studies often neglect non-routine trips focusing predominantly on commuting. However, recent research revealed that occasional trips make up a substantial portion of public transport journeys, and traveler preferences for non-routine trips diverge from their preferences for regular commuting. We study non-routine trips ba...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Public transportation (PT) studies often overlook non-routine trips, focusing on commuting trips. However, recent research reveals that occasional trips comprise a significant portion of public transportation trips. Furthermore, traveler preferences for non-routine trips essentially differ from their preferences for regular commuting. We investigat...
Article
Parking occupancy in a delineated area is defined by three major parameters – the rate of car arrivals, the dwell time of already parked cars, and the willingness of drivers to continue their search for a vacant parking spot. We investigate a series of theoretical and numeric models, both deterministic and stochastic, that describe parking dynamics...
Article
The partition of the Mobile Phone Network (MPN) service area into the cell towers' Voronoi polygons (VP) may serve as a coordinate system for representing the location of the mobile phone devices, as demonstrated by numerous papers that exploit mobile phone data for studying human spatial mobility. In these studies, the user is assumed to be locate...
Article
Full-text available
Motion planning in an uncertain dynamic environment is a complex task, especially when obstacles move in a non-linear fashion. In this paper obstacles refer to other vehicles, pedestrians, bicycles, riders etc. In such cases, predicting the obstacles’ kinematics requires a forecast of the obstacles’ trajectories. The choice of the forecast time hor...
Article
Full-text available
Transportation Network Companies (TNC), like Uber, Lyft, and VIA, started their activities a decade ago with a far-reaching hope that Mobility-On-Demand (MOD) transportation services would decelerate or even stop the ever-growing congestion. However, it didn't happen; the negative incentives, like congestion charges and higher parking prices, seem...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
By definition, the Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) system integrates transportation modes of very different flexibility - taxis, buses, light rail, ride-hailing. MaaS major unknown is the effectiveness of the ride-sharing modes. We employ a calibrated and validated MATSim multi-modal traffic model of the Jerusalem Metropolitan Area (JMA) to assess the...
Preprint
Full-text available
We assume that urban travelers may prefer flexible modes of transportation over conventional public transport (PT) for making non-routine trips, and estimate the potential for such modal switch based on a database of 63 million smartcard records of PT boardings made in Israel during June 2019. The behavioral patterns of PT users are revealed by clu...
Preprint
Full-text available
Parking occupancy in the area is defined by three major parameters - the rate of cars arrivals, the dwell time of already parked cars, and the willingness of drivers who are searching but yet did not find a vacant parking spot, to continue their search. We investigate a series of theoretical and numeric models, deterministic and stochastic, that de...
Preprint
Full-text available
The partition of the Mobile Phone Network (MPN) service area into the cell towers' Voronoi polygons (VP) may serve as a coordinate system for representing the location of the mobile phone devices. This view is shared by numerous papers that exploit mobile phone data for studying human spatial mobility. We investigate the credibility of this view by...
Article
We propose an approximation method for estimating the probability p(τ,n) of searching for on-street parking longer than time τ from the start of a parking search near a given destination n, based on high-resolution maps of parking demand and supply in a city. We verify the method by comparing its outcomes to the estimates obtained with an agent-bas...
Article
Full-text available
Simulating the dynamics and evolution of metropolitan transportation systems serving millions of travelers remains a difficult task, beyond existing standard software's abilities. MATSim (Multi-Agent Transportation Simulation) is the only high-resolution spatially-explicit framework that allows intrinsic population downscaling - simulating the enti...
Conference Paper
Knowing when a driver will quit cruising and either leave the area or park at an expensive off-street facility is critical for modeling parking search. We employ a serious game-PARKGAME for estimating the dynamics of drivers' decision making. 49 Participants of a game experiment were involved in three scenarios where they had to arrive on time to a...
Article
The traditional approach to mobile phone positioning is based on the assumption that the geographical location of a cell tower recorded in a Call Details Record (CDR) is a proxy for a device's location. A Voronoi tessellation is then constructed based on the entire network of cell towers and this tessellation is considered as a coordinate system, w...
Chapter
We propose ParkSage, a set of spatially-explicit algorithms for establishing parking prices that guarantee a predetermined occupancy rate over a city, and for evaluating the achieved reduction in parking search time. We apply ParkSage for establishing overnight parking prices that guarantee 85% occupation in the Israeli city of Bat Yam. Pricing by...
Article
Full-text available
Drivers cruising for scarce on-street parking in city centers create negative externalities, including congestion and pollution. We apply a serious game – PARKGAME – to understand and model drivers’ two intertwined instantaneous parking choices: when to quit cruising and where to cruise. Forty-nine participants took part in a lab experiment in whic...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Cruising for parking stems from local mismatch between the patterns of demand and supply for parking, which reflect urban heterogeneity in a complex non-linear way. We propose ParkSage, a set of spatially-explicit algorithms for establishing spatially heterogeneous parking prices that guarantee target levels of occupation and parking search time. W...
Preprint
Full-text available
The traditional approach to mobile phone positioning is based on the assumption that the geographical location of a cell tower recorded in a call details record (CDR) is a proxy for a device's location. A Voronoi tessellation is then constructed based on the entire network of cell towers and this tessellation is considered as a coordinate system, w...
Article
We present a comprehensive agent-based model of a closed system of cities. The model includes two types of agents—employees and firms. Firms compete for workers and make decisions concerning what to produce and whether to adopt innovations. Individual employees make migration decisions. Some migrants become intrapreneurs when their employers adopt...
Article
Full-text available
Computer hardware is steadily advancing; however, simulating real urban transportation systems that serve millions of individual travelers is still a difficult task. The Multi-Agent Transportation Simulation (MATSim) is the only agent-based traffic model that includes intrinsic downscaling - procedures of changing network parameters in order to sim...
Preprint
Full-text available
We propose ParkSage, a set of spatially-explicit algorithms for establishing parking prices that guarantee a predetermined occupancy rate over a city, and for evaluating the achieved reduction in parking search time. We apply ParkSage for establishing overnight parking prices that guarantee 85% occupation in the Israeli city of Bat Yam. Pricing by...
Article
Full-text available
Shared Automated Vehicles (SAVs) have the potential to revolutionize the urban transport landscape by reducing congestions, air pollution, and traffic accidents. However, the rejection rate for the travelers’ requests can jeopardize the potential adoption of SAVs as a new sustainable mode. We present MATSim simulations of SAVs service requests and...
Article
Equity is a critical dimension of accessibility assessment related to changes in transportation investments. We estimate equity based on a spatially-explicit computation of door to door travel times, in the metropolitan area, by car and by public transit at a resolution of individual buildings as origin and destination pairs. The Gini index and two...
Article
Urban parking prices are uniform over large areas and do not reflect spatially heterogeneous parking supply and demand. Underpricing results in high parking occupancy in the subareas where the demand exceeds supply and lengthy searches for vacant parking, whereas overpricing leads to low occupancy and hampered economic vitality. In recent years sev...
Article
Analysis of accidents that involve vehicles and pedestrians requires accurate reproduction of the dynamics of the vehicles and pedestrians immediately prior to and during the accident. In many cases, only centimeters and milliseconds separate survival from disaster, particularly when high-speed aggressive drivers and careless pedestrians are involv...
Conference Paper
We estimate parking cruising time curves-the probability P i (τ) of longer than τ parking search for destination N i located within an area with heterogeneous demand and supply. To do that, we estimate cruising time curves for an area of homogeneous demand and supply and then average these curves based on (1) a model of parking search behavior esta...
Preprint
We estimate parking cruising time curves - the probability Pi({\tau}) of longer than {\tau} parking search for destination Ni located within an area with heterogeneous demand and supply. To do that, we estimate cruising time curves for an area of homogeneous demand and supply and then average these curves based on (1) a model of parking search beha...
Article
Full-text available
Extensive antibiotic use over the years has led to the emergence and spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB). Antibiotic resistance poses a major threat to public health since for many infections antibiotic treatment is no longer effective. Hospitals are focal points for ARB spread. Antibiotic use in hospitals exerts selective pressure, accel...
Data
Sensitivity analysis of the impact of antibiotic density on acquisition of ARB under various hospital characteristics. ARB acquisitions per 100,000 patient days (PD) as antibiotic density increases. (A) The level of nurses' compliance with infection control is: 40%, 50% and 60%; (B) Number of patients per ward is: 8, 16 and 40; (C) Nurse-patient ra...
Article
Full-text available
Dedicated Bus Lanes (DBLs) have the potential to significantly improve the performance of bus services while encouraging mode switch from private cars to Public Transport (PT), reduce travel times and relieve urban congestion. We present MATSim simulations that assess the impact of DBLs on urban road traffic, focusing on the transportation network...
Article
City-scale models of urban fires were developed for countries where most construction is highly flammable, such as the US, China and Japan. Essential adjustments of existing models are required for modeling fire spread at the city scale in urban areas where construction is non-flammable and the space between buildings is filled by flammable vegetat...
Preprint
Full-text available
Last decades saw a dramatic increase in wildlife populations within urban areas. Policymakers seek to minimize human-wildlife conflicts resulting from overabundance of species, such as wild boars (Sus scrofa). To this end, there is a need to understand the drivers governing infiltration of wildlife into cities. In this paper we study the availabili...
Article
Full-text available
Urban parking prices do not reflect spatially heterogeneous parking supply and demand. We present an agent-based algorithm for establishing on-and off-street parking prices in a heterogeneous urban space that guarantee a predetermined uniform level of occupation.
Chapter
Full-text available
Urban spatial structure is shaped by decisions of land developers that both react to and influence urban plans. The paper presents an agent-based model of the evolution of the land development industry in a city regulated by a land-use plan that is modified from time to time by the planner. At the heart of the model are investment decisions of deve...
Chapter
Full-text available
Accessibility, particularly for public transport users is an important consideration in sustainable mobility policies. Various accessibility measures have been suggested in the literature, most at coarse aggregate spatial resolution of zones or neighborhoods. Based on recently available Big Urban GIS data our aim is to measure accessibility from th...
Book
Urban spatial structure is shaped by decisions of land developers that both react to and influence urban plans. The paper presents an agent-based model of the evolution of the land development industry in a city regulated by a land-use plan that is modified from time to time by the planner. At the heart of the model are investment decisions of deve...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Multiple ignitions (MIS) are a typical secondary consequence of urban disasters-earthquakes, peripheral forest fires, or rocket strikes. When they happen, firefighters are always outnumbered and the firefighting strategy and tactic they were trained for, do not apply. Computer simulation of multi-fire scenarios is the only possible approach in this...
Article
Parking prices in cities often do not reflect the heterogeneity of parking supply and demand. Underpricing results in high parking occupancy and long cruising time, whereas overpricing leads to low occupancy and hampered economic vitality. We present PARKFIT2, a spatially explicit algorithm for establishing a heterogeneous in space pattern of parki...
Article
Urban models serve as laboratories, providing researchers with the opportunity to assess the impact of a wide range of social and economic processes on the development of a built environment. Novelty and unexpected changes play an essential role in this development, but these are difficult to formalize and imitate. Typically, urban models simulate...
Article
Based on four time intervals within a forty-year period of observation, we construct land-use/land-cover (LULC) maps and estimate the transition probabilities between six LULC states. The maps and transition probability matrices (TPMs) were built based on the high-resolution aerial photos and 30-m multispectral Landsat images for the same years. We...
Article
Accessibility is an important consideration in sustainable mobility policies, particularly for transit users. Measures suggested in the literature are based on coarse aggregate spatial resolution of traffic analysis zones that is sufficient for managing car travels only. To reflect a human door-to-door travel, transit accessibility demands an expli...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
We present a model of fire spread in Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern (MME) cities. The model accounts for the characteristic properties of MME cities: inflammable constructions and vegetation between constructions that becomes highly flammable during long and dry summers. We develop the model following the general rules proposed by Lee and Davidso...
Article
Urban open spaces are considered as spatial residuals of the expansion of built areas. The environmental impact of the resulting land-cover pattern and associated ecosystem services are frequently evaluated at a crude spatial resolution only. However, wild animals use remaining interconnected fine-grain open spaces as an infrastructure for movement...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
ParkGame is a GIS-based computer game for studying how drivers cruise for parking in the city. While cruising, drivers need to account simultaneously for several factors – time of arrival, convenience of a parking place, parking prices and walk distance to a destination. The game setup is very flexible allowing to design different kinds of experime...
Article
The engineering view of a measurable, supply-independent, demand for parking that can be expressed by “minimum parking codes” has been generally rejected during the last two decades and is gradually being replaced by “maximum provision” codes, limited parking development, and demand pricing. To assess new planning practices one has to estimate the...
Technical Report
Full-text available
This research continues the development of a computation tool to examine accessibility in a metropolitan area at high spatial resolution –that of the individual building. We use this tool to examine the issue of equity in transportation infrastructure. Our measure of accessibility is relative – it looks at different modes of mobility, particularly...
Book
The aim of the book is to present and discuss new methods, issues and challenges involved in geoinformatics’ contribution to making transportation more intelligent, efficient and human-friendly. It covers a wide range of topics related to transportation and geoinformatics. The themes are divided into four main sections: Transport modeling, Sensor d...
Article
Background: Over the last decade, there is growing evidence that exposure to air pollution may be associated with increased risk for congenital malformations. Objectives: To evaluate the possible association between exposures to air pollution during pregnancy and congenital malformations among infants born following spontaneously conceived (SC)...
Article
The Schelling model is a simple agent based model that demonstrates how individuals' relocation decisions generate residential segregation in cities. Agents belong to one of two groups and occupy cells of rectangular space. Agents react to the fraction of agents of their own group within the neighborhood around their cell. Agents stay put when this...
Data
Every car trip ends with a parking search and parking. However, current transportation research still lacks practical tools and methodologies to analyze parking needs and dynamics, which cannot be adequately performed at an aggregate level. PARKFIT, a novel algorithm that is based on a spatially explicit high-resolution view of the inherently heter...
Article
This article examines how different levels of internal organization are reflected in the residential patterns of different population groups. In this case, the Haredi community comprises sects and sub-sects, whose communal identity plays a central role in everyday life and spatial organization. The residential preferences of Haredi individuals are...
Article
Data on traffic accidents clearly points to road black spots, where the accident rate is always high. However, road safety research is still far from understanding why this particular place on a road is risky. The reason is the lack of sufficient knowledge on how pedestrians and drivers interact when facing a potentially dangerous traffic situation...
Data
Full-text available
About one decade has passed since US vice president Al Gore articulated his vision of Digital Earth DE. Within this decade, a global multi-resolution and three-dimensional 3D representation of the Earth, which sums up the DE vision, increasingly gained ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
A car trip is over only when the driver parks near the destination. Urban traffic models focus on vehicles driving from origins to destinations, but take it for granted that the driver would eventually park. This is not always easy. Parking is a critical component of a trip and the lack of parking, or non-balanced pricing can be the reason of co...
Book
As cities are rapidly expanding and encroaching into agricultural and natural areas, a question of primary concern is how this expansion affects surrounding agriculture and natural landscapes. This book presents a wide spectrum of both theoretical and empirical approaches to simulation and assessment of landscape dynamics. The first part presents s...
Article
This article proposes two models to analyse parking search: an analytical model called PARKANALYST and a geosimulation model, termed PARKAGENT, which explicitly accounts for street network and drivers' parking-related decisions. We employ both models to analyse the impact of occupancy rate and demand-to-supply ratio on cruising for parking and to c...
Article
Full-text available
Like most EU and US planning systems, planning in Israel aims to promote certainty regarding future development by employing statutory land-use plans for stabilizing and binding the development of land use. In Israel, district planning from the 1980s onwards took place in the form of long-term land-use plans. However, in practice, Israeli planning...
Chapter
Full-text available
Housing market, as every market , is a product of thousands of interacting buyers and sellers driven by different interests. But unlike other markets, tje housing market is able to deeply transform the socio economic structure and the image of the city. These qualitative novelties unpredictable on the base of the previous properties are defined eme...
Article
Sanhedria, an inner-city neighborhood in Jerusalem, is populated mostly by members of several sects belonging to the Haredi (Jewish ultra-Orthodox) community. Sanhedria residents are close in their economic status and share similar preferences regarding their way of life; yet, their choice of residence is affected by the specific residential relati...
Conference Paper
The data on traffic accidents clearly point to the "Black Spots", where the accident rate remains high in months and years. However, road safety research is still far from understanding why this certain place on a road is risky. We tackle the problem by developing SAFEPED, multi agent microscopic 3D simulation of cars' and pedestrians' dynamics at...
Article
Full-text available
The Schelling model of segregation is an agent-based model that illustrates how individual tendencies regarding neighbors can lead to segregation. The model is especially useful for the study of residential segregation of ethnic groups where agents represent householders who relocate in the city. In the model, each agent belongs to one of two group...
Article
Full-text available
The modern metric system defines units of volume based on the cube. We propose that the ancient Egyptian system of measuring capacity employed a similar concept, but used the sphere instead. When considered in ancient Egyptian units, the volume of a sphere, whose circumference is one royal cubit, equals half a hekat. Using the measurements of large...