Computer Modelling in Transport Planning: An Investigation of the Current Issues and the Potential of Component Object Model (COM) Approach

Abstract

The past twenty years has been the period of rapid technological change and there is no question that computing technology has been enthusiastically adopted by transport professional and has brought about new concepts such as Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). However, this has not necessarily shown itself in software quality growth - especially from a transport modelling viewpoint. There has been a gap between the conceptualisation of a model and its implementation since 1960s. Transport software developers have been equipped with more powerful computer hardware and software than before. However, the increasing complexity of land-use/transport and environment system together with the constraint of limited resources allocated to the development task of transport modelling are putting pressure on the transport modelling task. Among fast growing computing technologies in recent years, object-oriented concept and component object model (COM) have continued to demonstrate their capability in laying fundamental layers for significant computing framework such as Microsoft Windows System. The use of such tools in implementing models of landuse/ transport and environment system opens up an opportunity to consider the extent to which a component object model framework can be constructed, re-used and customised to flexibly represent more complex models in a more resource effective way. This paper investigates the capability of the objectoriented concept as a candidate for structuring a COM framework for implementing models of land-use, transport and environmental impact system.