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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
Several digital tools exist which can generate isochrone maps.
openstreetmap-based solutions: [30]
GTFS-based solutions:
Proprietary data solutions:
Transportation planning is the process of defining future policies, goals, investments, and spatial planning designs to prepare for future needs to move people and goods to destinations. As practiced today, it is a collaborative process that incorporates the input of many stakeholders including various government agencies, the public and private businesses. Transportation planners apply a multi-modal and/or comprehensive approach to analyzing the wide range of alternatives and impacts on the transportation system to influence beneficial outcomes.
A transport network, or transportation network, is a network or graph in geographic space, describing an infrastructure that permits and constrains movement or flow. Examples include but are not limited to road networks, railways, air routes, pipelines, aqueducts, and power lines. The digital representation of these networks, and the methods for their analysis, is a core part of spatial analysis, geographic information systems, public utilities, and transport engineering. Network analysis is an application of the theories and algorithms of graph theory and is a form of proximity analysis.
Linear referencing, also called linear reference system or linear referencing system (LRS), is a method of spatial referencing in engineering and construction, in which the locations of physical features along a linear element are described in terms of measurements from a fixed point, such as a milestone along a road. Each feature is located by either a point or a line. If a segment of the linear element or route is changed, only those locations on the changed segment need to be updated. Linear referencing is suitable for management of data related to linear features like roads, railways, oil and gas transmission pipelines, power and data transmission lines, and rivers.
The public transport accessibility level (PTAL) is a method sometimes used in United Kingdom transport planning to assess the access level of geographical areas to public transport.
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed geodata sources. OpenStreetMap is freely licensed under the Open Database License and as a result commonly used to make electronic maps, inform turn-by-turn navigation, assist in humanitarian aid and data visualisation. OpenStreetMap uses its own topology to store geographical features which can then be exported into other GIS file formats. The OpenStreetMap website itself is an online map, geodata search engine and editor.
Spatial analysis is any of the formal techniques which studies entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties. Spatial analysis includes a variety of techniques using different analytic approaches, especially spatial statistics. It may be applied in fields as diverse as astronomy, with its studies of the placement of galaxies in the cosmos, or to chip fabrication engineering, with its use of "place and route" algorithms to build complex wiring structures. In a more restricted sense, spatial analysis is geospatial analysis, the technique applied to structures at the human scale, most notably in the analysis of geographic data. It may also be applied to genomics, as in transcriptomics data.
Time geography or time-space geography is an evolving transdisciplinary perspective on spatial and temporal processes and events such as social interaction, ecological interaction, social and environmental change, and biographies of individuals. Time geography "is not a subject area per se", but rather an integrative ontological framework and visual language in which space and time are basic dimensions of analysis of dynamic processes. Time geography was originally developed by human geographers, but today it is applied in multiple fields related to transportation, regional planning, geography, anthropology, time-use research, ecology, environmental science, and public health. According to Swedish geographer Bo Lenntorp: "It is a basic approach, and every researcher can connect it to theoretical considerations in her or his own way."
A transit map is a topological map in the form of a schematic diagram used to illustrate the routes and stations within a public transport system—whether this be bus, tram, rapid transit, commuter rail or ferry routes. The main components are color-coded lines to indicate each route or service, with named icons to indicate stations or stops.
TRANSIMS is an integrated set of tools developed to conduct regional transportation system analyses. With the goal of establishing TRANSIMS as an ongoing public resource available to the transportation community, TRANSIMS is made available under the NASA Open Source Agreement Version 1.3
In urban planning, walkability is the accessibility of amenities by foot. It is based on the idea that urban spaces should be more than just transport corridors designed for maximum vehicle throughput. Instead, it should be relatively complete livable spaces that serve a variety of uses, users, and transportation modes and reduce the need for cars for travel.
A journey planner, trip planner, or route planner is a specialized search engine used to find an optimal means of travelling between two or more given locations, sometimes using more than one transport mode. Searches may be optimized on different criteria, for example fastest, shortest, fewest changes, cheapest. They may be constrained, for example, to leave or arrive at a certain time, to avoid certain waypoints, etc. A single journey may use a sequence of several modes of transport, meaning the system may know about public transport services as well as transport networks for private transportation. Trip planning or journey planning is sometimes distinguished from route planning, which is typically thought of as using private modes of transportation such as cycling, driving, or walking, normally using a single mode at a time. Trip or journey planning, in contrast, would make use of at least one public transport mode which operates according to published schedules; given that public transport services only depart at specific times, an algorithm must therefore not only find a path to a destination, but seek to optimize it so as to minimize the waiting time incurred for each leg. In European Standards such as Transmodel, trip planning is used specifically to describe the planning of a route for a passenger, to avoid confusion with the completely separate process of planning the operational journeys to be made by public transport vehicles on which such trips are made.
Caliper Corporation was founded in 1983 as a developer of mapping software and is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts.
Public transport is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typically managed on a schedule, operated on established routes, and that may charge a posted fee for each trip. There is no rigid definition of which kinds of transport are included, and air travel is often not thought of when discussing public transport—dictionaries use wording like "buses, trains, etc." Examples of public transport include city buses, trolleybuses, trams and passenger trains, rapid transit and ferries. Public transport between cities is dominated by airlines, coaches, and intercity rail. High-speed rail networks are being developed in many parts of the world.
GTFS, which stands for General Transit Feed Specification or (originally) Google Transit Feed Specification, defines a common format for public transportation schedules and associated geographic information. GTFS contains only static or scheduled information about public transport services, and is sometimes known as GTFS Static or GTFS Schedule to distinguish it from the GTFS Realtime extension, which defines how information on the realtime status of services can be shared.
CARTO is a software as a service (SaaS) spatial analysis platform that provides GIS, web mapping, data visualization, spatial analytics, and spatial data science features. The company is positioned as a Location Intelligence platform due to its tools for geospatial data analysis and visualization that do not require advanced GIS or development experience. As a cloud-native platform, CARTO runs natively on cloud data warehouse platforms overcoming any previous limits on data scale for spatial workloads.
A transit desert is an area with limited transportation supply. Developed from the concept of food deserts, various methods have been proposed to measure transit deserts. Transit deserts are generally characterized by poor public transportation options and possibly poor bike, sidewalk, or road infrastructure. The lack of transportation options present in transit deserts may have negative effects of people’s health, job prospects, and economic mobility.
In transport planning, accessibility refers to a measure of the ease of reaching destinations or activities distributed in space, e.g. around a city or country. Accessibility is generally associated with a place of origin. A place with "high accessibility" is one from which many destinations can be reached or destinations can be reached with relative ease. "Low accessibility" implies that relatively few destinations can be reached for a given amount of time/effort/cost or that reaching destinations is more difficult or costly from that place.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to transportation planning.
GTFS Realtime is an extension to GTFS, in which public transport agencies share real-time vehicle locations, arrival time predictions, and alerts such as detours and cancellations via Protocol Buffers web server.
Azure Maps is a suite of cloud-based, location-based services provided by Microsoft as part of the company's Azure platform. The platform provides geospatial and location-based services via REST APIs and software development kits (SDKs). The service is typically used to integrate maps or geospatial data into applications.
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