Lead Presenter Biography

Hao Pang is an Assistant Research Scientist in Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI). He has over 8 years professional and research experience in traffic forecasting, travel behavior analysis, travel demand modeling, model programming, and transportation planning. He received PhD degree from University of Texas at Austin in Transportation Planning in 2021. Currently, his major responsibilities in TTI include but not limited to: lead project, provide professional technique support to travel demand models, model applications and research analysis, lead projects to create data visualization web apps and dashboard tools for travel demand model results.

In the past 5 years, he devoted himself to data visualization in transportation using HTML, JavaScript, and other front-end programing technique. The tools, web-apps, and dashboards which he developed make creating and interpreting complex travel model results significantly easier, which has the compounding benefit of making the results available to a much larger audience. These tools are available to Texas Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Districts, and other transportation planning stakeholders and have been universally praised.

Co-Authors

Presentation Description

Traditionally travel demand model (TDM) results are presented in ASCII format containing static and isolated numbers and tables. While this may be good for travel demand modelers, the approach is not appropriate for conveying data to non-modelers. Data visualization technology is making tremendous progress, thereby, allowing developers to present sophisticated TDM results in a more interactive way for wider audience.
The tools demonstrated in this project are intended to streamline the process to harvest the data from the TDM and to automatically generate user-friendly interactive reports based upon the model outputs. Those tools have been universally praised by stakeholders that utilize this feature within the standard travel demand modeling platform of Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).
One important feature of such tool is to help the analyst automatically generate an interactive summary report/dashboard without data entry errors. The tool can be used multiple times for different study areas and for different scenarios. The summary reports can be printed and compared in a similar format and layout. The utility can save analysts, planners, and modelers the effort of collecting data, summarizing the results, and creating the summary reports. With dynamic tables, charts, and interactive maps, the tool can help the analyst connect and interact one component in one stage with another component in another stage. It is extremely beneficial to professionals with limited TDM knowledge and skills to interpret complex model outputs.
Another important feature of the visualization tool is that all elements in the report/dashboard can be compiled and embedded in one single HTML file. In this way, the summary report/dashboard can be easily shared to someone thru an email or thru a hyperlink (generated by a cloud server). And it does not require any professional vendor-developed software, like TransCAD and Cube, but instead, can be opened in most internet browsers.
Depending on the purposes and the intended audience, the user interface can be designed like an interactive report or dashboard. Conversely, it can also be designed for more sophisticated model calibration and validation without invoking manual effort to migrate data between platforms. To better demonstrate the usage, three examples will be demonstrated. The first example is a scenario summary reporting component of the Texas integrated travel demand model package (TexPACK). It was initially designed for use by subject matter experts such as TxDOT staff but has demonstrated a wider acceptance beyond transportation professionals. The second example is an interactive dashboard to show different impacts associated with multiple alternative configurations for the I-35 centroid corridor in Metro Austin region. The report is designed to be easily understood by the public. It was presented during a recent public Open House and was praised by a wide range of audiences. The third example includes additional interactive functions supporting advanced model investigation. It is designed for technical experts with professional knowledge. By demonstrating those examples, this presentation can offer insights to transportation practitioners on how to design and develop an effective visualization tool to convey TDM results to various audiences. 

Presentation File