A Macro-Micro Integrated Modeling Approach for Urban Day-to-Day Travel Based on Complex System Dynamics in Information Environment

Urban day-to-day travel system is a complex nonlinear system, its current status depends not only on the status of the whole urban transportation system at the previous point in time, but also on the travel decision made by each traveler. Moreover, information environment generated by various intelligent terminals like smart phones, has even increased the complexity of urban day-to-day travel system, for micro level route choice decision made by each traveler can be affected by macro level road traffic flow information at any time, and micro route choice behavior can generate new macro traffic information. Nowadays, there is a lack of macro-micro integrated models to explain urban day-to-day travel system, especially its development in information environment. In this paper, complex system dynamics has been proposed and used to explain urban day-to-day travel system in a macro-micro integrated way. The main contribution of this paper is twofold: in micro level, each traveler in urban day-to-day travel system in information environment is endowed with unique physical properties, and the time correlation effect of individual travelers is described; in macro level, the traffic flow fluctuations under the influence of individual micro decisions, the stylized facts of urban day-to-day travel has been deduced, and an effective description of urban day-to-day travel phenomena has been formed.