Abstract

The so-called activity-based approach to analysis of human interaction within social and physical environments dates back to the original time-space geography works of Hägerstrand and his colleagues at the Lund School in 1970, with a unique kernel problem termed “household activity scheduling”. The problem attempts to derive estimates of activity decisions taking into account the time, duration, mode, location and route of the given activity sets performed by individuals. This dissertation research studies the activity scheduling/rescheduling problem under an uncertain environment. Theories and models for predicting activity-travel behavior are developed within the context of an activity-based approach built on the general consensus that the demand for travel is derived from a need or desire to participate in activities. Computationally-tractable systems are developed that inherently incorporate factors of uncertainty that can potentially increase the ability to address the household activity scheduling problem and the related dynamics of human movement required for social interaction and household sustenance. A stochastic mixed integer linear program is formulated to model travel behavior in which each activity of the prescribed household agenda has a known probability of being completed (or cancelled). Further, a chance-constrained program is proposed to determine the optimal activity/travel pattern when travel time and activity duration are assumed to be stochastically distributed, while the remaining inputs are precisely known. Finally, under the assumption that the activity/travel pattern involves a dynamic decision-making process of rescheduling/adaptations to initial plans subject to unexpected events, a predictive model of activity rescheduling behavior is developed in the form of a mixed integer linear program. The dissertation presents solution methodologies to the proposed models. Data drawn from a comprehensive on-line survey are utilized to verify the proposed activity schedule/reschedule models. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed models. Finally, conclusions and directions for future research are summarized.