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An Integrated Simulation and Business Intelligence
Framework for Designing and Planning Demand
Responsive Transport Systems
José Telhada, Ana Cecília Dias, Paulo Sampaio, Guilherme Pereira,
and Maria Sameiro Carvalho
Centro Algoritmi, Escola de Engenharia, Universidade do Minho, Campus de Gualtar,
4710-057 Braga, Portugal
{jose.telhada,ana.dias,paulo.sampaio,guilherme.pereira,
maria.carvalho}@algoritmi.uminho.pt
Abstract.
Transportation planners, analysts and decision-makers usually make
use of simulation tools in order to accurately predict the performance of new
practices and policies before their implementation. Additionally, most of them,
recently introduced new auxiliary Business Intelligence decision support tools
in order to transform their available huge amount of real operating data into
timely and accurate information for their decisions. However, although both of
those types of automated decision support are valuable, very few attempts were
already made by researchers to integrate them into a unified tool.
This paper proposes a general conceptual framework for a strategic and tac-
tical decision support system that integrates both of these technologies, simula-
tion and Business Intelligence, in order to enhance the overall practical interest
for its usage by taking advantage of the foreseen synergy of the integration.
This approach is then extended and illustrated to the case of demand responsive
transport (DRT) systems. DRT systems provide transport on demand for users,
using flexible schedules and routes to satisfy their travel needs.
The paper discusses the potential interest of the proposed integration, identi-
fying a set of questions that can then be answered with effectiveness and more
efficiently than before. In particular, such set comprises a list of strategic and
tactical issues that are of crucial importance to the design and planning of sus-
tainable DRT systems, before its implementation, thus overcoming the current
lack of analytical tools to this end.
Keywords:
Operations research, What-if simulation, Business intelligence,
Integrated decision support system, Demand responsive transport (DRT).
1
Introduction
The design and planning of transportation systems are usually very difficult tasks due
to the intrinsic high complexity of the interactions between the numerous stakeholders
and physical elements involved. This is the main reason why simulation tools are
widely used in such tasks, since they allow mimicking the functioning of systems,
