Abstract

Integrated GIS with Travel Demand Forecasting and Land Use Models: The Regional Planner's Hat-Trick
Track: Transportation
Author(s): Troy Hightower

21st century regional planning involves a myriad of software tools, each in turn providing and consuming data from the others. Arguably, the 3 most central software tools to most planning processes are GIS, Travel Demand Forecast Models, and Land Use Models. For decades, planning agencies and consultants have worked to understand the mutual effects of land use on transportation, and transportation on land use. Thus, for decades planners have passed data between the models, and later sought to build integrated software systems which automated the data processing "between" each software system. This presentation will describe the integration of GIS, transportation and land use models at the Kern County Council of Governments, located in the San Joaquin Valley of central California. Kern COG uses the Cube transportation modeling suite which employs Esri's ArcGIS Engine, along with UPLan, a Land Use Model developed as an ArcGIS Desktop extension. The geodatabase provides a common database format for faster and easier data sharing. The presentation will cover:

1. Benefits of integrating Land Use and Transportation models

2. Technical, Operational, and Policy Challenges

3. Applying GIS analysis tools to model results

4. Integration status

5. Our Next Steps

Troy Hightower
Kern County Council of Governments
1401 19th
Street Ste. 300
Bakersfield , California 93301
United States
Phone: 661-861-2191
Fax: 661-324-8215
E-mail: thightower@kerncog.org