Zenith 4-step Model

Veitch Lister Consulting is developing several models of Australian cities in OmniTRANS, such as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The underlying model system for these cities is called Zenith. Zenith includes an OmniTRANS plug-in which makes it easy for users to run a Four Step Model – without the need of any scripting knowledge.

The plug-in integrates into the OmniTRANS menu system and activating it pops up a dialog where the Four Step Model can be configured as desired. A job will be generated automatically when OK is clicked. And when this job needs to be edited later, the same dialog will display, as such shielding the script from the user.

The dialog itself presents the Four Step Model in a graphical and understandable manner. The steps are represented by four boxes that can be ticked, with an additional box for skim generation. The relations between them are visualised like a flow chart. The consequence of enabling or disabling steps is immediately evident.

Depending on the configuration, different data sources are required. For example, if Trip Distribution is enabled then the user needs to specify a Trip Ends source (the Matrix Cube). This is not necessary if Trip Generation is enabled as well, because then this becomes the source. Trip Generation in turn will need a Demographics source. The user will only see that what is necessary to be specified.

This system is flexible, and quick to grasp. Only a few clicks are required to do a full run based on the Zenith model system. Because of this intuitive user interface, running a model becomes easy and robust, even for modellers without prior scripting experience.