The scoring function at work

In one sentence

Travel is judged by what it does to the day — that is what the person compares.

Why it matters

One person, one day, three plans. The score accumulates through the day: activities add, trips subtract. Walking the shop tour instead of taking the bus saves waiting, in-vehicle time and two transfers — plan 2 scores higher and is kept. Walking the leisure tour as well cuts leisure to 30 minutes and pushes the evening later — the lost activity utility outweighs the saved penalties, plan 3 is dropped.

Agent-based simulation is usually explained with equations or with a screenshot of a running model. Neither shows why a planner should care. These explainers show the mechanism itself — one person, one day, one score — so that the results on a dashboard stop being a black box.

Sources

• Scoring parameters are typical MATSim values (illustrative); see Horni, Nagel & Axhausen (2016), ch. 3
• Charypar, D. & Nagel, K. (2005): Generating complete all-day activity plans with genetic algorithms. Transportation 32(4)

What you see

1. 00.0Parameters (Table 11)
2. 02.0Plan 1: all tours by bus
3. 08.0Plan 2: shop tour on foot
4. 14.0Plan 3: leisure tour on foot too
5. 20.0Plan memory: 2 kept, 3 dropped
6. 22.5Takeaway

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