About me

I’m a born and raised Calgarian, and grew up playing SimCity back in the 1980s; now I make my own simulations of cities. My primary professional and academic interest and specialization is in the development of travel demand models; that is, computer simulations of the choices that individuals make around travel — where to go, how to get there, when to travel, why to travel and so on.

I’ve been fortunate to have a broad enough career looking at travel from a number of different frameworks; I’ve developed “old-school” (but still pretty advanced) four-step travel models and “new-school” tour based and activity based models. I’ve modeled urban travel, long distance travel, commercial vehicle travel — this was my Master’s thesis. I’ve worked in Canada, in the US, in Australia.

Outside of work, I love my job so much that I tend to do the same sort of playing around with math, statistics and data in my spare time — that’s why I started this blog; to have a place to put this stuff, and also to force myself to finish all those little projects and move on. In addition to the nerd stuff, I love travel, and have visited dozens of countries on six continents — usually looking at the cities and how they work.

This blog is entirely my own personal opinion, not that of my employer or of any public agency.