Development of a Methodology for Activity Pattern Representation for Individuals in Western Province of Sri Lanka

Activity based transport demand models are used to model complex human behavioural responses to policy decisions. Activity pattern formulation is an important aspect of the model development process. The travel demand models developed and used currently in Sri Lanka are the traditional trip-based models. These models, although can be enhanced, have limitation of being unresponsive to disaggregate level changes. With the increasing demand for the models to be more responsive for policy decision and project formulation, there is a need to move towards disaggregate level modelling, thus the need for an activity-based model (ABM). Understanding the activity pattern groups of the study area is a priori and the first step towards building ABM. But, there has not been any previous work for Sri Lanka to understand the activity pattern groups. Therefore, this research develops a method for representation of activity patterns of individuals for Western province of Sri Lanka. The home visit survey (HVS) data collected as part of CoMTrans study done in 2013 has been used. Each member's activity pattern was developed with spatial and temporal representation. 1,106 unique activity patterns were identified with education based and work-based patterns having the highest frequency. These were categorised into three main categories (Education, Work and Other), and each member was assigned a category based on pattern's main trip. These categories were further divided based on number of tours, purpose, diversions and time of travel. The main activity pattern of each subgroup was also identified. Further analysis of the subgroups provided behavioural aspects that are relevant to each tour purpose. The study identified 17 subgroups consisting of 5 work, 4 educational and 8 other pattern groups.