5.5 DaySim Input Preparation - Running PopulationSim

PopulationSim should be run when there are changes in the population in the regions' MAZs and TAZs. For example, if additional households are added to an MAZ, the user should run PopulationSim again to account for that change. The following steps illustrates how to run PopulationSim. The video webinar also demonstrates the process in detail.

Update the Controls

The user should update the control files according to the changes in the population. For example, if there are 100 additional households in MAZ 1215, then the user should open the control_totals_maz.csv file and add 100 additional households to MAZ 1215. The user should also update the TAZ and COUNTY that holds MAZ 1215 in the control_totals_taz.csv and control_totals_county.csv files respectively.

Run PopulationSim

PopulationSim is run from a batch file named RunPopulationSim.bat. Once the user has updated the control files, the user should open a command window in the Population_Synthesis directory and run the batch file as shown in the figure below.

Convert PopulationSim Outputs to DaySim Inputs

The primary outputs of PopulationSim are the synthetic_households.csv and the synthetic_persons.csv files. These files need to be reformatted before they can be used by DaySim. There is an R script that performs this conversion. The user needs to run this script to perform the conversion. The video tutorial demonstrates how to run this script.