UrbanFootprint and RapidFire Models

Calthorpe Associates develops and deploys two cutting-edge scenario development and modeling tools to express the varying impacts of development and infrastructure investment choices at a variety of scales. Our models are being deployed statewide in the Vision California project, and at the regional and county scales in the San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California, Honolulu, and other regions. They were also used to provide timely, critical information for California’s greenhouse gas reduction target-setting process, and are being calibrated and customized for use in international settings.

URBANFOOTPRINT

The open source geo-spatial UrbanFootprint model is being developed and deployed across California’s major regions as part of the Vision California process, and is designed to deploy in regions and jurisdictions across California and the United States. Built by Calthorpe Associates on a base of open source software (i.e. Linux, PostGIS, and PostGreSQL), it is a powerful and dynamic scenario creation and modeling tool with full co-benefits analysis capacity. UrbanFootprint is more than just a land use sketch model – it is a complete data, scenario, and analysis ecosystem, serving as a practical organizing vessel for large and varied data sets, future plan and scenario data, modeling engines, and results reporting. Its thin-client web-based interface requires no proprietary software to run and is designed to run on virtually all operating systems, desktop, and mobile environments. The model currently includes:  

• A full set of 30+ detailed and researched place types built up from a set of 50+ building types, each one mixed from three to over a dozen actual real-world built or planned buildings
• A complete 5.5-acre loaded grid for the entire California study area, with the ability to scale down to the parcel level for both scenario creation and analysis
• A scenario translation engine that converts regional and local land use plans into UrbanFootprint placetypes
• A web-based scenario ‘painter’ that allows for custom built scenarios and scenario editing
• An 8-D travel sketch travel model to accurately assess the impact of changes to urban form on travel behavior
• A public health analysis engine that estimates a complete range of active transportation metrics
• Climate-sensitive building energy and water modeling
• Fiscal impacts analysis
• Greenhouse gas and other emissions modeling  

UrbanFootprint results are calculated for both the base (existing) year as well as for future scenarios, so as to capture the effect of changes in future urban form on existing areas. The power and speed with which UrbanFootprint operates allows it to undertake much more sophisticated geographical analyses than previous generations of GIS-based sketch models. The model can be used to create and test scenarios at the statewide, regional, county, jurisdictional, neighborhood or single-development scales.

RAPIDFIRE

The RapidFire model is a user-friendly, spreadsheet-based tool that is used to produce and evaluate statewide, regional, and county-level scenarios. It emerged out of a near-term need for a comprehensive modeling tool that could inform state, regional, and local agencies and policy makers in evaluating climate, land use, and infrastructure investment policies. The model produces results for a range of critical metrics, including:

• Land consumption
• Infrastructure cost (including capital and operations & maintenance (O&M))
• City/jurisdictional revenues
• Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and fuel consumption
• Transportation GHG and air pollutant emissions
• Building energy and water consumption and related GHG emissions
• Household costs for transportation and utilities
• Public health (air pollution-related) impacts and costs

Results are calculated using empirical data and the latest research. The model constitutes a single framework into which research-based assumptions can be loaded to test the impacts of varying land use patterns. The transparency of the model’s structure of input assumptions makes it readily adaptable to different study areas, as well as responsive to data emerging from ongoing technical analyses by state and regional agencies. The model can be used to create and test scenarios at the national, statewide, regional, county, and jurisdictional scales.

Project Images: 

Project Images: 

Project Images: 

Project Images: 

Project Images: 

Project Images: 

Project Images: