Spatial network analysis software
Encyclopedia
Spatial network analysis software are computer tools used to prepare various graph
-based analysis of spatial network
s. They stem from the research field of space syntax
in the domain of architecture
, although they can now be used to analyse road networks over an entire continent.
As the domain of space syntax has expanded, there are now a plethora of tools associated with it. Since most were developed within the academic community, most tend to be free for academic use, and some are open source.
In historical order:
Graph (mathematics)
In mathematics, a graph is an abstract representation of a set of objects where some pairs of the objects are connected by links. The interconnected objects are represented by mathematical abstractions called vertices, and the links that connect some pairs of vertices are called edges...
-based analysis of spatial network
Spatial network
A spatial network is a network of spatial elements. In physical space spatial networks are derived from maps of open space within the urban context or building. One might think of the 'space map' as being the negative image of the standard map, with the open space cut out of the background...
s. They stem from the research field of space syntax
Space syntax
The term space syntax encompasses a set of theories and techniques for the analysis of spatial configurations. Originally it was conceived by Bill Hillier, Julienne Hanson and colleagues at The Bartlett, University College London in the late 1970s to early 1980s as a tool to help architects...
in the domain of architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
, although they can now be used to analyse road networks over an entire continent.
As the domain of space syntax has expanded, there are now a plethora of tools associated with it. Since most were developed within the academic community, most tend to be free for academic use, and some are open source.
In historical order:
- Axman The (near) original developed by Nick Sheep Dalton of UCLUniversity College LondonUniversity College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
to perform axial line analysis on computers running Mac OSMac OSMac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
, currently used in more than 50 countries. This spawned many offshoots such as Pesh (for the analysis of convex space networks) and SpaceBox (for the analysis of 'all-line' axial maps).
- Spatialist Developed at Georgia Institute of TechnologyGeorgia Institute of TechnologyThe Georgia Institute of Technology is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States...
to implement theoretical innovations principally introduced by John Peponis, this software is plugs into the MicroStationMicrostationMicroStation is a CAD software product for 2- and 3-dimensional design and drafting, developed and sold by Bentley Systems. The latest versions of the software are released solely for Microsoft Windows operating systems, but historically MicroStation was available for Macintosh platforms and a...
CADComputer-aided designComputer-aided design , also known as computer-aided design and drafting , is the use of computer technology for the process of design and design-documentation. Computer Aided Drafting describes the process of drafting with a computer...
package to analyse networks of automatically generated 'e-spaces' and 's-spaces'.
- Axwoman, written by Bin Jiang while at UCL, is a tool to perform axial analysis as a plug-in to ESRIESRIEsri is a software development and services company providing Geographic Information System software and geodatabase management applications. The headquarters of Esri is in Redlands, California....
products.
- Depthmap Developed by Alasdair Turner of UCL, this software was first developed to generate isovistIsovistA single isovist is the volume of space visible from a given point in space, together with a specification of the location of that point. Isovists are naturally three-dimensional, but they may also be studied in two dimensions: either in horizontal section or in other vertical sections through...
s and perform visibility graph analysisVisibility graph analysisVisibility graph analysis is a method of analysing the inter-visibility connections within buildings or urban networks. Visibility graph analysis was developed from the architectural theory of space syntax by Turner et al...
of building systems on computers running WindowsMicrosoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, but now includes the automatic generation of axial line networks and analysis of axial line networks and road segment line networks at anything up to the level of the USA or Europe.
- OmniVista Developed by Nick Sheep Dalton and Ruth Conroy Dalton to perform a range of isovistIsovistA single isovist is the volume of space visible from a given point in space, together with a specification of the location of that point. Isovists are naturally three-dimensional, but they may also be studied in two dimensions: either in horizontal section or in other vertical sections through...
measures on Mac OSMac OSMac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
computers.
- Fathom, a commercial implementation of visibility graph analysis written by the Intelligent Space Partnership.
- Mindwalk Developed by Lucas Figueiredo, This software performs spatial analysis over standard axial maps and new continuity maps. It is written in Java and runs on several platforms. Also known as xSpace, Mindwalk has been used as a research and teaching tool at several institutions since 2002 and now it is being distributed worldwide for academic and non-commercial purposes.
- Isovist Analyst by Sanjay Rana while at UCL, this program creates isovists from building plans as a plug-in to ESRIESRIEsri is a software development and services company providing Geographic Information System software and geodatabase management applications. The headquarters of Esri is in Redlands, California....
products.
- Ajanachara. Open source software developed by Gerald Franz at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics to perform visibility graph analysisVisibility graph analysisVisibility graph analysis is a method of analysing the inter-visibility connections within buildings or urban networks. Visibility graph analysis was developed from the architectural theory of space syntax by Turner et al...
of 3D Studio Max3D Studio MaxAutodesk 3ds Max, formerly 3D Studio MAX, is for making 3D animations. It was developed and produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. It has modeling capabilities, a flexible plugin architecture and can be used on the Microsoft Windows platform. It's frequently used by video game developers, TV...
and VRMLVRMLVRML is a standard file format for representing 3-dimensional interactive vector graphics, designed particularly with the World Wide Web in mind...
models.
- Webmap Also developed by Nick Sheep Dalton at UCL, this software is free to use (although it requires registration), and allows users to analyse axial maps through a web browserWeb browserA web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
interface.
- Confeego Developed by the commercial company Space Syntax Limited, but available free for academic use, this software plugs directly into MapInfoMapInfoMapInfo Corporation, initially incorporated as Navigational Technologies Incorporated, was a leading Location Intelligence and GIS company, headquartered in North Greenbush, New York. It was acquired on April 19, 2007 by Pitney Bowes, and on January 28, 2009, the name of division of Pitney Bowes it...
to analyse line axial networks.
- AJAX by Mike BattyMike BattyMichael Batty CBE, FBA, FRS is a British urban planner and geographer, and Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London where he founded, directed, and built up...
of UCL, performs both traditional axial network analysis (Batty calls this the primal analysis), and point-based visibility analysis introduced by Bin Jiang (which Batty calls the dual analysis). In a recent paper, Batty shows the elegant mathematical relationship between the two analyses.
- OverView plug-in to AutoCad by Christian Derix for Aedas Architects in collaboration with the Center for Evolutionary Computing in Architecture CECA. Allows architects to do quick visual integration mapping via isovistIsovistA single isovist is the volume of space visible from a given point in space, together with a specification of the location of that point. Isovists are naturally three-dimensional, but they may also be studied in two dimensions: either in horizontal section or in other vertical sections through...
analysis on their projects. Contains also the possibility to analyse non-planar environments to take volumes and hilly sites into account.
- AXess 1.0 by Jennifer Brisbane at the City University of New YorkCity University of New YorkThe City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
. A context menu tool for ArcGIS 9.x that calculates connectivity, control, mean depth, global integration, and local integration for all nodes in an axial line layer. Free download available at ESRI ArcScripts.
- Webmap-At-Home by Nick Sheep Dalton UCLUniversity College LondonUniversity College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
. A Java implementation of the original Axman program with a number of extra features added. This is a platform neutral full application capable of reading DXF files and the original Axman binary format. Free download available at WebmapAthome .
- AxialGen by Bin Jiang and Xintao Liu at the University of Gävle, Sweden. It is a plugin to ArcGIS 9.2 that generates automatically the axial lines for a complex polygon with holes.
- Layout-iQ 1.0 Developed by Nelson Lee at Rapid Modeling. Used extensively in healthcare, manufacturing, banking, retail, and office space, Layout-iQ is a software that evaluates the frequency of flow in a workspace and measures the total travel distance that resources will travel to navigate through the workspace. The software integrates CAD drawings with a diagram of flow between points. The thickness and color of the flow lines indicate the intensity of flow in each line, so users can visually see high priority point to point relationships. As the user moves locations in the diagram, the software dynamically calculates the impact on travel distance and users can immediately see the impact of the change on operations. The software also allows for the creation of improved aisles and paths using the aisle effectiveness measurement and actual path diagramming.
- Urban Network Analysis Toolbox for ArcGIS (free, open-source) Developed by the City Form Research Group at MIT. The UNA Toolbox can be used to compute five types of graph centrality measures on spatial networks: Reach; Gravity; Betweenness; Closeness; and Straightness. The tools incorporate three important features that make them particularly suited for spatial analysis on urban street networks. First, they can account for both geometry and topology in the input networks, using either metric distance (e.g. Meters) or topological distance (e.g. Turns) as impedance factors in the analysis. Second, unlike previous software tools that operate with two network elements (nodes and edges), the UNA tools include a third network element – buildings – which are used as the spatial units of analysis for all measures. Two neighboring buildings on the same street segments can therefore obtain different accessibility results. And third, the UNA tools optionally allow buildings to be weighted according to their particular characteristics – more voluminous, more populated, or otherwise more important buildings can be specified to have a proportionately stronger effect on the analysis outcomes, yielding more accurate and reliable results to any of the specified measures. The toolbox is built for easy scaling – it is equally suited for small-scale, detailed network analysis of dense urban areas as it is for sparser large-scale regional networks. The toolbox requires ArcGIS 10 software with an ArcGIS Network Analyst Extension.
See also
- Geospatial topologyGeospatial topologyGeospatial topology studies the rules concerning the relationships between the points, lines, and polygons that represent the features of a geographic region. For example, where two polygons represent adjacent counties, typical topological rules would require that the counties share a common...
- Space syntaxSpace syntaxThe term space syntax encompasses a set of theories and techniques for the analysis of spatial configurations. Originally it was conceived by Bill Hillier, Julienne Hanson and colleagues at The Bartlett, University College London in the late 1970s to early 1980s as a tool to help architects...
- Spatial networkSpatial networkA spatial network is a network of spatial elements. In physical space spatial networks are derived from maps of open space within the urban context or building. One might think of the 'space map' as being the negative image of the standard map, with the open space cut out of the background...
- Urban planningUrban planningUrban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
- Visibility graph analysisVisibility graph analysisVisibility graph analysis is a method of analysing the inter-visibility connections within buildings or urban networks. Visibility graph analysis was developed from the architectural theory of space syntax by Turner et al...
- Fuzzy architectural spatial analysisFuzzy architectural spatial analysisFuzzy architectural spatial analysis is a spatial analysis method of analyzing the spatial formation and architectural space intensity within any architectural organization.Fuzzy architectural spatial analysis is used in architecture, interior design, urban planning and...