GPS household surveys are all the rage these days – all the cool kids have one, and those that don’t have one seem to think they are somehow not as cool.  Of course, if everyone jumped off a bridge…

Anyway, I’m the lucky manager of the department that received the first GPS-only household survey.  Since that time, three other agencies (that I can think of, at least) have these and each time there has been some improvements in the quality of the processing algorithms that I am trying to take advantage of.  And everyone else gets the advantages, too, as I posted it on Github.

This currently uses sources presented at the Innovations in Travel Modeling Conference 2014 by Marcelo Oliveira at Westat.  Westat wrote NCHRP 775 (08-89), and while the document had been completed since sometime before the conference, I was unable to sweet talk someone into emailing me an advance copy (it wasn’t for the lack of trying).  I did receive word that the document was to be released on Friday the 13th of June.  I really hope the date is a coincidence.

The code on Github has a fairly detailed readme file (that shows up when you scroll down from the source listing, but it basically says that it’s here, it’s a work in progress, and I don’t include data.  My hope is that others can jump in and help and we can get a fairly nice system working.  My other hope is that we can standardize processing a little and reduce the cost of these surveys.

This is my first use of Maven.  I can’t say I’m really using it now, so I have a lot to learn.

There are other side projects that may come out of this, but they will brought up in due time.

-A-

Posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014 By Andrew Rohne Comments are closed.