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

TLDR: In this article, an approach to assess the impact of the creation or expansion of an air transport infrastructure over regional development is proposed, which 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 economic performance of local activity sectors and transportation modalities.

Abstract: An approach to assess the impact of the creation or either the expansion of an air transport infrastructure over regional development is proposed in this paper. Effective long term planning of this 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 economic performance of local activity sectors and transportation modalities. 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 analysis considering passengers and freight flows at the first level and activity flows at the second level is made possible and becomes available to process the assessment of different regional development scenarios. 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.