A new initiative from Modelling World: Exploring Open Source Software

Exploring Open Source Software

For Modelling World 2022, we’re delighted to convene a session of experts to explore this key topic, led by Dustin Carlino

The open source community makes some grand promises – people create software, then release the source code for free. Anybody who wants to improve or modify can do so. There are many open source success stories – Linux, Wordpress, Blender, Firefox – but what about in the transport modelling world?

SUMO, MATSim, A/B Street, AequilibraE, and Streetmix are a few examples, along with travel demand models like NorMITs, Soundcast and ActivitySim. Many of these projects have been running for years with a modest team; so how are they able to sustain themselves without selling licences or charging consulting fees?

Relatedly, many GIS departments have been releasing LIDAR data, parking studies, pavement audits and other datasets under licences with few restrictions.

The star of open data in transportation is OpenStreetMap: a worldwide, volunteerproduced database. Open source and commercial software alike make heavy use of these common resources.

Open source transportation software has recently been trending towards public engagement, requiring less technical background for users to explore possible changes. There’s potential to use this software to educate people about controversial or confusing changes, but also a danger to mislead people with results that require expertise to interpret.

Achieving environmentally sustainable transport systems is an urgent and monumental task, and one that must happen all around the world. For cities without the resources to licence commercial software and invest in training their employees to use it, how can open software and data help – and what pitfalls must they be wary of?

Join the open source session at Modelling World to hear from leaders in the open source transport space debate these questions, explain why they’ve chosen to release their projects for free, about challenges they’ve faced operating this way, and about new opportunities for collaboration. n

Dustin Carlino is a Research Associate at the Alan Turing Institute and Cartographer at A/B Street

https://a-b-street.github.io/ docs/index.html

Ali Inayathusein, Executive Director (Modelling and Analytics) at Veitch Lister Consulting says open source is not an alternative to commercial packages, but complementary….

We are heavy users of open source software.The case for its use across different areas is nuanced; there are pros and cons. The benefit is that you can build upon the work of others, saving time and effort versus developing from scratch. You can customise to your needs, often without restriction, and give back to the wider community allowing bright minds across organisations and geographic boundaries to collaborate to produce creative solutions.

The load of problem-solving can be shared amongst a large group, avoiding the need for large investments from a single organisation. Where software is used widely, you have a wide pool of users to support troubleshooting, maintaining, improving and upgrading code. At VLC we, as many others, are strong users of GIS packages such as QGIS. We also use open source web mapping platforms such as Mapbox which provide crucial building blocks for further work. The use and availability of such frameworks has been enormously helpful in the development of our Planwisely and Sitewisely web-based visualisation platforms.

In the transport modelling space, we also use several open source software solutions including MATSim and ActivitySim for agent and activity-based modelling. MATSim especially is used heavily in academia with a number of practical applications across the world too. This means that new add-ons and features are constantly developed. The ActivitySim framework is worthy of mention because it has allowed a number of US transport agencies to pool funding to develop a customisable activity-based modelling framework.

At VLC, as part of our ongoing research activity in the open source space, we have also been able to add to the codebase to fix existing bugs in some areas as we came across them; a good example of how a win-win is created. In this case, VLC is getting use of an advanced modelling framework without having to pay for its use or development from scratch, whilst leaving the software in a better state for future users.

However, open source is not a silver bullet. The flip side of all this is that there is often little support and agency in the development pathway. Without commercial agreements, support can drop off at any time and there may be no help on hand when bugs are found; typically at time critical points during project delivery!

There is no guarantee in coding or performance standards and no organisation responsible that you can seek support from as a default. This is where commercial software providers play an important role. They act to pool funding through a commercial model, seeking to pay for innovation and support through license and maintenance fees. In the end it is a case of horses for courses, and there is no universally desirable or optimal operating model. At VLC we do all three: we write our own proprietary code, use opensource and subscribe to commercial software packages depending on our needs. Open source is not an alternative to commercial packages, but complementary. n

Ali Inayathusein is Executive Director (Modelling and Analytics) at VLC

www.veitchlister.com