Project Meeting 2017.04.14

Pipelining and random numbers

• Discussed progress from last meeting
• Coding complete and full model runs successfully #88
• @RSG - update documentation since this is a significant revision to the framework
• Created new issue #179 for future potential pipelining improvements
• Full model run uses a lot of RAM (~150GB) so let's pay attention to this as we move forward
  • Our dependence on orca may be part of the issue
• Discussed the more complete progress report that we'll use moving forward

Separating defaults (mtctm1) from the core

• We began prototyping a better separation of concerns, as discussed in Elizabeth's review and also a bit here and #169
• We discussed two options for doing this:
  • Separating things into two repos - core and example/defaults/model
  • Separating things into clearer sub-packages - activitysim.core and activitysim.model
• Some comments
  • having a working model "packaged" with activitysim is really helpful for new users
  • Separate repos would make it so we don't download everyone's model every time we sync
  • We don't want the urbansim problem, which is every region is a separate branch and they are never resolved
  • Keeping all the code in one repo makes the management/admin easier as issues, milestones, etc. are in one place; Elizabeth said we can now do collective issues/dashboard by organization though
  • Elizabeth grabbed github.com/ActivitySim so we could move to it if we want and we can have an organization landing page
  • ODOT PopSim would benefit from a cleaner interface for some of the ActivitySim code that is planned to be used in it such as pipelining and expression solving
  • ActivitySim would benefit from some of the enhancements made to the core package as part of the ODOT popSim work
  • Joe doesn't want the needs of other projects to distract us from the needs of this project
  • Eventually integration with other projects like BCA is good, but maybe not right now
  • Think of ActivitySim as a toolkit - logit models, skim managers, expression solvers, etc + an ABM
• This was a lively discussion and we ended with:
  • Split activitysim into activitysim.core and activitysim.model
  • fork activitysim for ODOT popSim, make revisions, and create a pull request. Once we have a pull request, we'll discuss it with the PMC since this will make the conversation more concrete

Governance / management

• Updated the Development page to better describe our existing technical governance / management
• Joe discussed updates to governance plan
• Next steps
  • @Joe to work on admin section
  • @Clint (and Ben) to work on code management section
  • Plan to post draft on wiki by TRB Planning Applications conference