A policy can change where households and firms locate, how people organise a day, and how vehicles move through the network. These effects unfold over different timescales and are often divided between separate models. HARMONY set out to create an integrated system that could pass information between those levels while allowing cities to retain established software and apply only the components a question required.
Methods
The suite uses three linked levels. Strategic models forecast economic, demographic, land-use and freight patterns from year to year. Tactical agent-based models create daily activity schedules for passengers and truck tours for freight. Operational models assign those trips to multimodal networks at minute or second resolution and include controllers for emerging mobility services. A common data warehouse and software adapters support interoperability with Aimsun, PTV Visum and SUMO. Co-creation with metropolitan authorities defined the scenarios and outputs.
Results
The suite gives an authority a consistent route from a land-use or service assumption to demand, network and impact measures. It can run levels together to reveal feedbacks or separately where data and the decision require a narrower model. The project result is an operational platform and a set of metropolitan applications, not one universal forecast. Transfer to another city still depends on suitable networks, behavioural data, calibration and clear local scenarios.
