Hi Bin,
enjoyed your paper a lot. Thanks.
A few comments/questions:
1) Apparently you are using two sw products: ArcGIS (for Gävle) and NetLogo (for London). Ir is not clear to me how the two were applied. I would assume that NetLogo was used for the agent simulation while ArcGIS was used for network analysis (metrics), but as it reads boh programmes were used for both purposes (but in different regions). Can you clear me up?
2) Is the NetLogo model-code you used for agents interaction with the network publicly available?
3) are your purposely agents (II) applying a 'shortest path' search towards their target?
4) Wouldn't you assume that the purposely agents (II) could be further 'improved' by taking the probability (i.e. the number of potential facilities) into account when selecting targets/destinations as a probability weight?. Couldn't application of a temporal dimension be considered. As it is, the simulation mimics the behaviour of taxies quite well (roaming short distance, any where, all during the day), but not the way e.g. home-work journeys will take place.
5) One main finding - as I read it - is that ABM's are not required to simulate traffic flows (which is quite disappointing for an abm-modeler :-)). Nevertheless, your conclude that abm's provide us with new ways to study the rational behind human (spatial) behaviour, but do not further elaborate on this.
To me - and that is probably what you are saying - the thing is that the network (obviously) is the mandatory, bounding condition for transport behaviour. It is interesting (and efficient) to come up with indicators (metrics) that can predict human behaviour patterns (at a gross level), but that we need the agent-based approach to further enhance our behavioural understanding, especially when considering behaviour beyond the 'average being'. Right?
Hans