A bi-level scheme for assessing the impact of air transportation on local development

Abstract : An approach to assess the impact of the creation or expansion of an air transport infrastructure over regional development is proposed in this paper. Effective long term planning of this costly investment requires performing an overall analysis of socio-economic consequences through long term forecasting, scenario generation and risk analysis. One of main aspects of this task is related with the estimation of future demand over the modified transportation network which attends the considered region. The proposed approach makes use of two complementary models: One model is devoted to demand forecasting taking into account the modified accessibility of the multimodal transportation network, the other one defines the global transport supply according to a profit maximization behavior for the involved transport system. The demand forecasting process is based on an entropy maximization approach with flexible origin-destination levels to determine the intensity and the distribution of new origin-destination vectors. A two level solution technique considering vehicle flows at the first level and the payload/passengers flows at the second level is introduced. The proposed solution scheme is composed of an iterative process between the current solution for demand forecasting and the supply optimization problem: the entropy maximizing distribution problem provides the origin-destination matrix given a cost/capacity structure, while the supply optimization problem provides this cost/capacity structure resulting from the accessibility level, given the updated origin-destination vectors. The proposed approach is illustrated in the case of a fast developing rural agro-industrial area in central Brazil, where the consequences of the installation of a medium size airport are assessed.