Quantifying the ambient population using hourly population footfall data and an agent-based model of daily mobility

The ambient population, i.e. the demographics and volume of people in a particular location throughout the day, has been studied less than the night-time residential population. Although the spatio-temporal behaviour of some groups, such as commuters, are captured in sources such as population censuses, much less is known about groups such as retired people who have less documented behaviour patterns. This paper uses agent-based modelling to disaggregate some ambient population data to estimate the size and demographics of the constituent populations during the day. This is accomplished by first building a model of commuters to model typical 9–5 workday patterns. The differences between the model outputs and real footfall data (the error) can be an indication of the contributions that other groups make to the overall footfall. The research then iteratively simulates a wider range of demographic groups, maximising the correspondence between the model and data at each stage. An application of this methodology to the town centre of Otley, West Yorkshire, UK, is presented. Ultimately this approach could lead to a better understanding about how town- and city-centres are used by residents and visitors, contributing useful information in a situation where raw data on the populations do not exist. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s10707-019-00346-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.