Date
Wednesday, November 15, 2023
Time
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Name
Survey Integration in NREL OpenPATH for Comprehensive Travel Behavior Evaluation
Session ID
A7 - Lightning: Transportation
Track
Transportation
Description

To better understand how travel behavior affects the environment and the use of transportation systems, we present a novel approach that integrates traditional methods of behavioral data collection with continuous geospatial data collection from mobile phones. Geospatial data collection provides insight into patterns of travel behavior, such as the frequency, duration, distance, and modes of travel (i.e. when, where, and how people travel). Traditional methods of behavioral assessment, such as surveys and focus groups, can provide insight into the beliefs and motivations behind these behaviors (i.e. why people travel), but they often fail to capture the nuances of travel behavior in near-real time. To gain a holistic understanding of travel behavior, we must be able to link these together. NREL's Open Platform for Agile Trip Heuristics (NREL OpenPATH) is a robust system that uses automatic trip detection and classification algorithms to collect, process, and analyze geospatial and behavioral data related to mobility. It also supports trip labels from the users to gain insight into the motivations of travelers. Over the last several months, the configurability of the application has been enhanced to make it easier for researchers to tailor the data collection to their needs. The app allows researchers to supply their own surveys in XForms format and adjust the interface according to provided configuration options. The functionality is extensible and modular. The current use case aims to record how people spend time during and between trips. The surveys ask travelers to indicate the time spent on a range of activities. Time use data, in combination with trip data, can then be used to understand and quantify the impacts of transportation systems on people’s lives, which is essential for the development of effective strategies for sustainable transportation.

Supporting Document 1