Estimation of dynamic origin-destination trip tables for a general network

In this paper, we propose a parametric optimization approach to estimate ti me-dependent path flows, or origin-destination (OD) trip tables, using avai lable data on link traffic volumes for a general road network. Our model as sumes knowledge of certain time-dependent link flow contribution factors th at are a dynamic generalization of the path-link incidence matrix for the s tatic case. A least squares model is accordingly formulated to determine th e time-dependent trip tables. We develop a column generation approach that uses a sequence of dynamic shortest path subproblems in order to solve this problem. Computational results are presented on several variants of two sa mple test networks from the literature. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.