BDEI 3 - Participant Details: Mark Simonson

Name:

Mark Simonson

Affiliation:

Puget Sound Regional Council

Bio

I'm currently employed by the Puget Sound Regional Council as a Principal Planner in the agency's Regional Systems Data division. As supervisor of the data group, I'm responsible overall for data collection and development of current year estimates of demographic data, special transportation and travel surveys, and forecasts of both regional demographic and economic data, and smaller area land use forecasts. Part of my job is not only the application of the current land use models, DRAM and EMPAL, but also supporting the project to implement UrbanSim by June 2005 as the agency's new land use forecasting model.

Prior to joining the Regional Council in 2000, I worked as a transportation planner for eight years, first for Wilbur Smith Associates in New Haven, Connecticut, and more recently for Snohomish County in Everett, Washington. I received my Masters Degree in Urban and Regional Planning in 1992 from the University of Iowa.

Work:

Since the beginning of the contract between the Center for Urban Simulation and Policy Analysis (CUSPA) at the UW, and the PSRC, I've been one of the main Regional Council staff participants in the project, primarily from a data assembly and coordination standpoint. I've also been responsible for keeping our member jurisdictions (city and county staff from around the region) informed on the progress of implementing the UrbanSim model at the PSRC, as well as working with a Technical Advisory Committee to ensure their contributions are integrated, and their concerns are addressed. Once the model is fully operational at the Regional Council, I will be one of the primary users /operators of the model to produce the agency\'s land use forecasts.

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