GIS in Transportation Modelling

PRESENTED BY,
Pratik U.Mankar
M. Tech. 3rd Sem
Transportation Engineering
Roll No.:16
INTRODUCTION :-

• The use of GIS in Transportation modelling has grown tremendously

during the last few years. Roughly speaking there seem to be parallel
paths of development where GIS plays an important role.

• One path starts from spatial perspective , where GIS has been used
extensively and other development path starts from transport
modelling perspective, where a need to display modelling results has
grown.
• By using GIS with a transportation modeling package, it is possible to
extend modeling capabilities and open up new possibilities for
developing, using, and maintaining transportation data.
• GIS can also play a useful role in organizing inputs to other stages in
the travel demand forecasting process. Examples include compiling
data in Traffic Analysis Zones for trip generation, formatting the zonal
data into trip tables for trip distribution modeling and organizing mode
choice data by geographic area as part of mode split analyses.
Use of GIS in Transportation modelling

• GIS and transport modelling is approached from the spatial

perspective with the ambition of adding modelling tools to GIS.
• Among the factors behind the use of GIS in transport modelling there
are developments that made it possible to work with GIS as the main
platforms and developments that made it desirable and the basis of
every transport modelling system is the transport network.
• The use of GIS in transport modelling is advantageous as of increasing
availability of geographical data used for modelling purpose
• Transportation analysis in GIS is quite demanding as regards the
quality of data.
Data for Transport Applications
• Geographic databases as such consist of spatial and non-spatial data
with complex data structures used for complex analysis.
• Some characteristics of complex data are given below :
Transport data is spatial
Network data structures
Data often represent flows
Large amount of data
Require array and matrix data structures
May consist of composite geographical objects
• Data for transport applications often represent flows of people and
goods between point and zones. Geographically this means that each
data object is associated with two spatial objects instead of one which
is standard in a GIS .
• A GIS based database for transport modelling is expected to support
several modelling tools in the form of modelling tools.
 GIS and transport modelling :-
• GIS are essentially data driven while transport models are driven by
theory. Roughly speaking GIS data are detailed while data for
transport modelling just contains as much information needed by the
algorithm.
• This is shown in figure:

Representation of space in GIS and transport modelling package

• The GIS perspective on Transport and Land use
Preparation of data zones and networks

• GIS can also play a useful role in organizing inputs to other stages in
the travel demand forecasting process. For example compiling data in
Traffic Analysis for various Zones for :
Trip Generation
Trip Distribution of mode choice
Network Assignment
Trip Generation
• It is widely used for forecasting travel demands. It predicts the
number of trips originating in or destined for a particular traffic
analysis zone.
• Trip generation uses trip rates that are averages for large segment of
the study area. Trip productions are based on household characteristics
such as the number of people in the household and the number of
vehicles available.
• The data for this model is zone based this means scaler value is
associated with each zone which is a data structure that all GIS can
handle
Trip Distribution of mode choice

• Trip generation matches trip makers’ origins and destinations to

develop a “trip table” a matrix that displays the number of trips going
from each origin to each destination.
• Data for trip distribution and model choice are usually mix of scaler
values associated with zones (eg. parking cost) and matrix data
associated with origin destination pairs (travel time,cost)
Network Assignment
• Data resulting from network assignment are scaler : the number of
vehicles in a link per unit time. The assignment itself normally done
independently of GIS even a software like TransCAD contains
assignment routines.
Different strategies for integrating GIS and modelling tools
Accessibility
• Accessibility is the individuals possibility to take advantage of
resource with a fixed location in space that requires presence.

• Accessibility measures : Accessibility measures are based on two

components a source of supply and friction of distance. This two
components can depending on functional form, be given different
weights and importance.
• The description of accessibility could cover the following factors :
• Attributes of Individuals (age, gender, income)
• Attributes of space (travel time, travel cost)
• Attributes of mobility resource (available modes, access to transport
network)
• Attributes of resources (capacity, opening hours, congestion, quality of
resource)
GIS models used in Transportation

• Field models of the continuous variation of a phenomenon over space

(e.g., land elevation)

• Discrete models, depending on which discrete entities (points, lines or

polygons) populate space (e.g., toll barriers, urbanized areas)

• Network models to represent topologically-connected linear entities

(e.g., roads, rail lines) that are fixed in the continuous reference
surface
• All of these three models are useful in transportation

• The network model built around the concept of arc and node plays the
key role in this application domain because single- and multi-modal
infrastructure networks are vital in enabling and supporting passenger
and freight movement.

• In fact, many transportation applications only require a network model

to represent data.
THANK YOU