Our home is the origin of many of our daily trips, such as travelling to work, university or school, or visiting places for leisure or shopping. Home is usually also the final destination during the day. Knowing where people and households live, hence knowing their residential location, is important to determine travel demand which refers to the amount of actual spatial movements. Gaining insight about the association between mobility options and behaviour on the one side and location on the other is of considerable interest since the availability of cars or bikes determines where we live. While travel demand models are able to depict the consequences of changes in transport infrastructure or mobility behaviour, they cannot project results for the spatial distribution of residential locations as part of the urban structure. This is where "SALSA" comes into play and complements the institute’s microscopic travel demand model "TAPAS".
"SALSA" (short for "Simulating Location Demand and Supply in Urban Agglomerations") is a model that distributes households to residential locations depending on demand and supply for real estate properties. It is currently developed and validated for the City of Berlin in the projects "Verkehrsentwicklung und Umwelt"(Transport and the Environment) and "Urbane Mobilität" (Urban Mobility). In conjunction with "TAPAS" and models for traffic assignment, "SALSA" enables us to answer research questions about the relation between mobility and residential location choice, particularly in scenarios such as changing transport infrastructure or demographics.