What's wrong with freight models and what should we do about it?

Southworth, Frank; Wigan, Marcus

Abstract

After many years of neglect, freight, freight operations, and commodity flow models are now attracting substantial attention, and there is a wide perception among transportation analysts that they all need a careful overhaul. In this paper the range of applications and issues associated with different forms of freight model are considered. Confusion about what one can do with a given model is often founded on a lack of transparency as to the domain of application for which the model was originally designed and set up. In this paper the authors offer a framework for placing existing freight models in the context of both the temporal targets and the valid domains of application for which they were originally developed. A conclusion of this exercise is that, while existing freight models are simply not up to the task of forecasting future freight activity, there are a number of uses for which these models are well suited. This includes the ability to “predict the present”, an objective and also a technical challenge that has been much under-rated to date. The appropriate action is to assess what the user feels is missing, and to rebalance research efforts to match.

Citation

Southworth, F., & Wigan, M. (2006). What's wrong with freight models and what should we do about it?. Transportation research record,

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: 2006
• Deposit Date: Apr 1, 2009
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 1, 2009
• Print ISSN: 0361-1981
• Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: Freight models; Freight operations models; Commodity flow models; Temporal targets; Domains of application; Predictive modelling
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/2519
• Additional Information: The revised paper of 19pp appears in this repository. The original paper was presented at the TRB 85th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers CD-ROM. Transportation Research Board 85th Annual Meeting. Location: Washington DC, United States. Date: 20060122 - 20060126.