A Demand Modelling Pipeline for an Agent-Based Traffic Simulation of the City of Barcelona

The growth of urban population and the proliferation of mobility options in big cities are adding to the complexity of comprehending how people move about and how efficiently they do it. Understanding how traffic patterns change throughout the day is essential for legislators, public administrations, and other stakeholders, as it has a direct impact on citizens' quality of life by, for instance, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and noise pollution. In this context, simulation becomes an essential tool for grasping the emerging dynamics of urban transportation, citizens' mobility patterns, and traffic flow bottlenecks. This work presents a complete data modelling pipeline for generating the population, network and transportation demand that is fed to a multi-modal traffic simulation of the city of Barcelona using MATSim and open-access statistical data sources. The model is calibrated, the results are obtained, and future applications of the developed tool are outlined.