Final Version

The Freight Demand (FRD) module consists of four components: trade conversion, route choice, modal split and conversion. The trade conversion component converts trade values to volumes and extracts air demand from total trade between an origin and destination. The route choice and modal split components distribute demand across transport chains and perform a modal split on each leg of the transport chains, while applying the effects of measures. The conversion component derives other transport indicators, such as tonne-kilometres and vehicle-kilometres. The transport indicators relating to full-freight aircraft are determined in a subcomponent and feed into the conversion component.

The Freight Demand module together with the Economy & Resources module follow an analogue approach to the classical four-step methodology of generation, distribution, modal-split and assignment. The latter is replaced by calculation of performance indicators in the conversion component.

The module delivers trade in value per origin-destination (O-D), which is converted to volumes by applying volume density assumptions per O-D and commodity (assumed constant over time) extracted from ETISplus database. The air demand base matrix extracted from ETISplus is adjusted according to growth in imports and exports delivered by the ECR module, and subtracted from total trade. This results in tonnes demand per commodity per Origin-Destination.

Each origin-destination is connected by route chains that have been extracted from the ETISplus database. These chains form up to three legs that connect origin and destination via up to two transhipment regions. For each leg, the modal split is calculated taking into account cost elements that can be influenced by the Vehicle Stock module. This is done to compute generalised cost per mode connecting an origin and destination of a leg through a multinomial logit function. Based on total generalised costs for route chains connecting origin and destination, demand is distributed across the route chains through transhipment regions by applying a multinomial logit.

The conversion step calculates tonne-kilometre and vehicle-kilometre performance indicators for the origin region and “on the territory” perspective. The latter is calculated by applying the share of distance in a leg in a country obtained, using data from ETISplus.

Finally, assumptions on full-freight share and capacity of airfreight transport are applied to extract airfreight transport by full-freight aircraft from the total demand for air.