Isochrone map

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Isochrone map of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1912. The railway lines are clearly visible. Austro-hungarian-empire-railway-network-1912-2-2.png
Isochrone map of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1912. The railway lines are clearly visible.
Isochrone map showing drive times around airports in northern Finland, created using GIS software (2011) Drive time isochrones airports northern Finland.png
Isochrone map showing drive times around airports in northern Finland, created using GIS software (2011)

An isochrone map in geography and urban planning is a map that depicts the area accessible from a point within a certain time threshold. [1] An isochrone (iso = equal, chrone = time) is defined as "a line drawn on a map connecting points at which something occurs or arrives at the same time". [2] In hydrology and transportation planning isochrone maps are commonly used to depict areas of equal travel time. The term is also used in cardiology [3] [4] [5] as a tool to visually detect abnormalities using body surface distribution. [6]

Contents

History

Rates of travel in America, 1800 to 1930. plate 138, page 366) Rates of travel in America, 1800 to 1930.png
Rates of travel in America, 1800 to 1930. plate 138, page 366)
Francis Galton's first known isochronic map published for the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, 1881. It shows the travel times in 1881 from London, United Kingdom to different parts of the world in days. It assumes that there are favourable travel conditions and that travel arrangements over land have been made in advance. It assumes travelling methods of the day within a reasonable cost. Isochronic Passage Chart Francis Galton 1881.jpg
Francis Galton's first known isochronic map published for the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, 1881. It shows the travel times in 1881 from London, United Kingdom to different parts of the world in days. It assumes that there are favourable travel conditions and that travel arrangements over land have been made in advance. It assumes travelling methods of the day within a reasonable cost.
An early isochrone map of Melbourne rail transport travel times, 1910-1922 Map of Melbourne and environs minimum railway or tramway time zones.jpg
An early isochrone map of Melbourne rail transport travel times, 1910–1922

Early examples of Isochrone maps include the Galton's Isochronic Postal Charts and Isochronic Passage Charts of 1881 and 1882, [8] Bartholomew's Isochronic Distance Map and Chart first published 1889, [9] and Albrecht Penck's Isochronenkarte first published 1887. [10] Where as Galton and the Bartholomews published maps depicting the days or weeks it took to travel long distances, Albrecht further developed the idea to not only depict long distances and world travel but also smaller areas. Penck also created a series of maps that only depict the travel times of a certain transportation mode, for example rail transport. Isochrone maps are commonly used in the UK in connection with development control. [11] [12] [13] [14] Isochrones are currently typically computed by via generating shortest-path trees on network graphs, and then generating a convex hull around the accessible nodes. Increases in computation, data storage, and improvements in algorithms have facilitated the rapid generation of isochrones. [1] [15] Recent techniques in visualization include linking travel times to network edges to show the paths accessible from a point rather than show the area accessible from a point. [1]

Usage

Hydrology

Isochrone and related maps are used to show the time taken for runoff water within a drainage basin to reach a lake, reservoir or outlet, assuming constant and uniform effective rainfall. [16] [17] [18] [19] An early example of this method was demonstrated by Clark in 1945. [20]

Transport planning

Isochrone maps have been used in transportation planning since at least 1887. [21] [22] Isochrone maps in the context of transport planning are essentially maps of accessibility where travel time is used as the cost metric. Isochrone maps can be created for different modes of transportation, [23] e.g. foot, bicycle, motor vehicle. Put simply, the output of an isochrone map for transport will show how far (in distance) is reachable from a start point, including the parameter of time.

Such maps for private motor transport were widely used in a 1972 study into airport accessibility in Hampshire, South East England. [24] At that time, their use was disadvantaged by being time-consuming to create. [24]

The term isodapane map is used to refer to a map were the contour represent transportation cost instead of transportation time. [25]

Isochrone map of Toronto comparing travel times between bicycle and public transit (2016) Toronto travel times from downtown.png
Isochrone map of Toronto comparing travel times between bicycle and public transit (2016)

General public

Journey time websites have been built using mapping technologies and open data. [26] [27] Isochrones can be used by house hunters wishing to evaluate residential areas. [28] An isochrone map of the London Underground network was made available in 2007. [29]

Services and applications

Several digital tools exist which can generate isochrone maps.

openstreetmap-based solutions: [30]

GTFS-based solutions:

Proprietary data solutions:

See also

Related Research Articles

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References

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