
Michael BalmerETH Zurich | ETH Zürich · Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering
Michael Balmer
Dr. sc. ETH
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74
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Introduction
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January 2006 - present
Publications
Publications (74)
Epidemiological simulations as a method are used to better understand and predict the spreading of infectious diseases, for example of COVID-19. This paper presents an approach that combines a well-established approach from transportation modelling that uses person-centric data-driven human mobility modelling with a mechanistic infection model and...
Epidemiological simulations as a method are used to better understand and predict the spreading of infectious diseases, for example of COVID-19.
This paper presents an approach that combines a well-established approach from transportation modelling that uses person-centric data-driven human mobility modelling with a mechanistic infection model and...
Epidemiological simulations as a method are used to better understand and predict the spreading of infectious diseases, for example of COVID-19. This paper presents an approach that combines person-centric data-driven human mobility modelling with a mechanistic infection model and a person-centric disease progression model. The model includes the c...
Epidemiological simulations as a method are used to better understand and predict the spreading of infectious diseases, for example of COVID-19.
This paper presents an approach that combines person-centric data-driven human mobility modelling with a mechanistic infection model and a person-centric disease progression model.
Results show that in Ber...
Epidemiological simulations as a method are used to better understand and predict the spreading of infectious diseases, for example of COVID-19. This paper presents an approach that combines person-centric data-driven human mobility modelling with a mechanistic infection model and a person-centric disease progression model. Results show that in Ber...
We use human mobility models, for which we are experts, and attach a virus infection dynamics to it, for which we are not experts but have taken it from the literature, including recent publications. This results in a virus spreading dynamics model. The results should be verified, but because of the current time pressure, we publish them in their c...
Fundamental changes are continuing in the carsharing industry and the rapid diffusion of free-floating carsharing is one of them. The increased size of the operators and the more frequent occurrence of direct competition among them will likely make carsharing pricing a more important issue. The problem of how carsharing demand varies with different...
Carsharing, in any form, is still growing around the world. One of the effects is the increasing number of cities in which multiple carsharing operators are competing. The carsharing industry has never been as competitive as it is now: the present is a good time for researchers to invest efforts in providing tools for the assessment and planning of...
Introduction of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) could potentially trigger a stepwise electrification of the whole transportation sec- tor. But the impact on the electric grid by electrical vehicl e charging is still not fully known. This paper investigates several PHEV charging schemes, including smart charging, using a novel iterative app...
Single Wagonload (SWL) is still a major component in Swiss and European Logistic networks. Due to changing market requirements and a higher infrastructure load by passenger trains the SWL production schemes have to be optimised. The existing models do not cover both network levels, the production schemes and the physical infrastructure, which are r...
With the increasing use of GPS in transport surveys, analysts can not only choose from numerous new ways to model travel behaviour but also face several new challenges. For instance, information about chosen routes is now available with a high level of spatial and temporal accuracy. However, advanced post-processing is necessary to make this inform...
Sample movie of simulated influenza spread 1. This movie shows one exemplary simulation run of a simulated seasonal influenza epidemic in Switzerland. The colour scheme illustrates the number of new influenza cases per square kilometre and time step.
Additional information on the model parameters and structure. This supplementary material file provides additional information on several parameters of the simulation and flowcharts describing the central algorithms of the simulation model.
Sample movie of simulated influenza spread 2. This movie shows one exemplary simulation run of a simulated seasonal influenza epidemic in Switzerland. The colour scheme illustrates the number of new influenza cases per square kilometre and time step.
Sample movie of simulated influenza spread 3. This movie shows one exemplary simulation run of a simulated seasonal influenza epidemic in Switzerland. The colour scheme illustrates the number of new influenza cases per square kilometre and time step.
Sample movie of simulated influenza spread 5. This movie shows one exemplary simulation run of a simulated seasonal influenza epidemic in Switzerland. The colour scheme illustrates the number of new influenza cases per square kilometre and time step.
Sample movie of simulated influenza spread 6. This movie shows one exemplary simulation run of a simulated seasonal influenza epidemic in Switzerland. The colour scheme illustrates the number of new influenza cases per square kilometre and time step.
Sample movie of simulated influenza spread 4. This movie shows one exemplary simulation run of a simulated seasonal influenza epidemic in Switzerland. The colour scheme illustrates the number of new influenza cases per square kilometre and time step.
ABSTRACT: world has not faced a severe pandemic for decades, except the rather mild H1N1 one in 2009, pandemic influenza models are inherently hypothetical and validation is, thus, difficult. We aim at reconstructing a recent seasonal influenza epidemic that occurred in Switzerland and deem this to be a promising validation strategy for models of i...
The agent-based microsimulation modeling technique for transportation planning is rapidly developing, is being applied in practice, and is attracting considerable attention. Along with the conventional four-step modeling technique, MATSim and EMME/2 represent two genres of traffic assignment. They are built on different theoretical bases: dynamic s...
In many transportation simulation applications including intelligent transportation systems (ITS), behavioral responses of individual travelers are important. This implies that simulating individual travelers directly may be useful. Such a microscopic simulation, consisting of many intelligent particles (= agents), is an example of a multi-agent si...
The activity-based multiagent simulation toolkit MATSim adopts a coevolutionary approach to capturing the patterns of people's activity scheduling and participation behavior at a high level of detail. Until now, the search space of the MATSim system was formed by every agent's route and time choice. This paper focuses on the crucial computational i...
MATSim-T (multi-agent traffic simulation toolkit) is a simulation platform for large-scale agent-based traffic. Each agent plans its day and performs its activities based on that plan. Then it chooses appropriate routes to reach its destinations. To avoid conflicts in intersections, signal control need to be added into MATSim-T. Phase modeling and...
In contrast to aggregated macroscopic models of traffic simulation, multi-agent microscopic models, such as MATSim, enable modeling of individual behavior and facilitate more detailed traffic analysis. However, such detailed modeling also leads to an increased computational burden, such that simulation performance becomes critical.
This paper looks...
MATSim-T (Multi-Agent Traffic Simulation Toolkit) is a simulation platform for large-scale agent-based traffic. Each agent plans its day and performs its activities based on that plan. Then it chooses appropriate routes to reach its destinations. The queue based micro-simulation of MATSim-T ignores the conflicts in intersections. To avoid conflicts...
ABSTRACT This paper is aimed ,to renew ,the debate on car-sharing and its future development. The
Micro-simulations for transport planning are becoming increasingly important in traffic simulation, traffic analysis, and traffic forecasting. In the last decades the shift from using typically aggregated data to more detailed, individual based, complex data (e.g. GPS tracking) and the continuously growing computer performance on fixed price level...
The paper proposes a framework to investigate impacts of wide-scale Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) utilization on power- and transportation systems. It consists of two interacting parts, a power systems- and a transportation simulation. The latter one finds an equilibrium representing vehicle behavior used as an input for power system simul...
This paper presents the concept and implementation of the MATSim (Multi-Agent Transport Simulation Toolkit) location choice module for shopping and leisure activities and shows first simulation results for the Zürich region of Switzerland using more than 60,000 people and 7,800 shop or leisure activity locations. MATSim is designed to handle large-...
This paper provides an introduction to multi-agent traffic simulation. Metropolitan regions can consist of several million inhabitants, implying the simulation of several million travelers, which represents a considerable computational challenge. We reports on our recent case study of a real-world Berlin scenario. The paper explains computational t...
The typical method to couple activity-based demand generation (ABDG) and dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) is time-dependent origin-destination (O-D) matrices. With that coupling method, the individual traveler's information gets lost. Delays at one trip do not affect later trips. However, it is possible to retain the full agent information from the...
"Activity space," defined as the local areas within which people move or travel during the course of their activities during a specified time period, is a measure of an individual's spatial behavior that captures individual and environmental differences and offers an alternative approach to studying the spatial reach of travelers. The shape and the...
This paper provides an introduction to multi-agent traffic simulation. Metropolitan regions can consist of several million inhabitants, implying the simulation of several million travelers, which represents a considerable computational challenge. We reports on our recent case study of a real-world Berlin scenario. The paper explains computational t...
In agent based traffic simulations which use systematic relaxation to reach a steady state of the scenario, the performance of the routing algorithm used for finding a path from a start node to an end node in the network is crucial for the overall performance. For example, a systematic re- laxation process for a large scale scenario with about 7.5...
Traffic management and route guidance are optimization problems by nature. In this article, we consider algorithms for centralized route guidance and discuss fairness aspects for the individual user resulting from optimal route guidance policies. The first part of this article deals with the mathematical aspects of these optimization problems from...
Microsimulation is becoming increasingly important in traffic demand modeling. The major advantage over traditional four-step models is the ability to simulate each traveler individually. Decision-making processes can be included for each individual. Traffic demand is the result of the different decisions made by individuals; these decisions lead t...
In a traffic network, capacities of parts of the network restrict the amount of transport that can be handled by this network. The capacity of a given traffic network element is not fixed, but influenced by parameters such as number of lanes, maximum speed, weather, view horizon, and so on. These parameters also define the maximum capacity of compl...
Microsimulation is becoming increasingly important in traffic demand modeling. The major advantage over traditional four-step models is the ability to simulate each traveler individually. Decision-making processes can be included for each individual. Traffic demand is the result of the different decisions made by individuals; these decisions lead t...
In transportation planning and modelling feasible transportation networks are crucial. To be useful, the networks have to fulfil certain requirements: first, the geographical locations of network elements (typically nodes and links) have to be accurate; second, the given attributes (i.e. number of lanes, length, allowed speed, and so on) of the net...
Traveling is necessary and desirable; yet, it imposes external costs on other people. Quantitative methods help finding a balance. Multi-agent simulations seem an obvious possibility here. A real world traffic simulation consists of many modules, all requiring different expertise. The paper discusses how such modules can be coupled to a complete si...
This paper reports the development of a new mode choice model system, embedded in a multi- agent transport simulation, aiming to obtain both a spatially and behaviourally fine representation of modal choice of the simulated individuals. The new model addresses the subtour level, substantially improving on previous work, which either addresses the t...
Traffic flow microsimulations are interesting for transport planning problems due to their high temporal and spatial resolution. Unfortunately, most of them involve high computational costs making them impractical for running large scale scenarios. In this paper, we present how we extend our previous event-driven queue-based mircosimulation to run...
An external strategy module for an iterative multi-agent micro-simulation of travel demand is presented. This module called planomat currently optimizes the time allocation and route choice of activity plans, which are the agent-based representation of travel demand. The module combines broad search for alternative timing decisions with an optimiza...
Activity space, defined as "the local areas within which people move or travel during the course of their daily activities", is a measure of individual's spatial behaviour which theoretically accounts for the individual and environmental differences and offers an alternative approach to studying geographic accessibility. The shape and area of the a...
There is by now agreement that activity-based demand generation for transportation simulation should be tried. One possibility to bring activity-based demand generation into the transportation planning process is to use it to replace the first two (or three) steps of the 4-step-process. In this case, the activity-based demand generation produces a...
In a traffic network, capacities of parts of the network restrict the amount of transport units which can be handled by this network. The capacity of a given traffic network element is not fixed but influenced by parameters such as number of lanes, maximum speed, weather, view horizon and so on. These parameters also define the maximum capacity of...
Microsimulation tools are becoming increasingly important in traffic demand modeling. The major advantage over traditional assignment models lies in the fact that each traveler is simulated individually. This means, for example, that decision making processes can be included for each individual. The traffic demand is a result of different decisions...
In a multi-agent transportation simulation, travelers are represented as individual "agents" who make independent decisions about their actions. We are implementing a large-scale version of such a simulation in order to model the traveler behavior in all of Switzerland. Our simulation is composed of separate modules. Each module models a different...
1 Abstract Activity-based travel demand,models derive travel demand,from people’s desire to pursue ac-
1 Abstract Activity-based travel demand,models,generate activity-travel schedules for individual trav-