SILO is a simple yet powerful land-use model that is fully integrated with a travel demand model. This allows representing the full land-use/transportation feedback cycle.
SILO is a microscopic model, enabling the integration with both aggregate (or four-step) and disaggregate (or activity-based) travel demand models. SILO is written in Java and open-source.
Initially developed as a research project by Parsons Brinckerhoff, Inc. for Minneapolis/St. Paul, SILO was also implemented for the state of Maryland by the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland. Currently, a completely overhauled version is implemented for the Munich Metropolitan Area by the research group Modeling Spatial Mobility at the Technical University of Munich.
Integrated land-use/ transportation models allow representing the land-use/ transportation feedback cycle, in which locations of households and jobs are used as trip ends to generate travel, and accessibilities of the travel demand model are used to influence relocation decisions.