Santiago, Chile


Santiago, the capital city of Chile, has a total population of 6 million people in an area of 641 square kilometers, which makes it by far the most populated city of Chile. The city suffers from air pollution due to emissions from fixed and mobile sources, which particularly in the winter season concentrate in the Santiago Valley.

The MATSim Santiago scenario was built upon three open data sources:

  1. Car network information from OpenStreetMap,
  2. Public transport supply data in Google Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), and
  3. Travel diaries from Santiago’s 2012 Origin-Destination Survey.

In its first part, the simulation video shows the activities of the 1% population being carried out in each time, where red dots represents “home” activities while blue dots represents “work”, two of the most important ones. Secondly, the video shows the movement of the car and public transport vehicles along the network of the scenario.



Different runnable versions of the scenario are available under https://svn.vsp.tu-berlin.de/repos/public-svn/matsim/scenarios/countries/cl/santiago/. It is planned that the latest version will be continuously improved by MATSim community researchers. Recent improvements include:

  1. Usage of population expansion factors from the 2012 Origin-Destination Survey to generate a 1% and a 10% sample population.
  2. Randomizing activity locations of the expanded agents, using official land registry data.
  3. Generating more variability in the agents’ trip start times, using smartcard transit data (known as Bip!).
  4. Integrating tolls on the tolled highways.
  5. Integrating shared taxis (colectivos) into the simulation.

The scenario is typically calibrated with respect to modal split and traffic volumes using manual and automatic calibration methods.

The sole use of open data sources and the continuous stepwise scenario improvement process makes MATSim Santiago one of the most complete scenarios that are freely available for researchers worldwide. It might become a role model for administrations all around the world to realize the power of open data initiatives when it comes to transparent decisionmaking and the stimulation of innovation activity in the private sector.