Thoughts on “Network Analysis in Geographic Information Science: Review, Assessment, and Projections”

In this article, Curtin gives a detailed introduction on how network GIS evolves overtime, and its potential challenges and opportunities. He also mentioned that GIS related network analysis can be adapted into so many disciplines such as medicine, psychology, urban planning, and computer science.

This reminds me of a website that provides people with walkability score for tons of thousands of locations. The walkability score will be calculated based on the commuting time to nearby bus stops, subway stations, restaurants, grocery stores, parks, and etc. The score will be higher if one can walk to those location in less than several minutes. This website aims at providing walkability information to people who wants to find an apartment with great location. The calculation of the walkability score is largely based on network analysis by approximating the average walk time from one place to another and intergrade those results.

Another example I can think of is one project where I used network analysis to find a new potential location of fire station that can help other location to cover more area and be more efficient. This is also calculated by finding optimal routes and approximated the commute time.

The accuracy of the first result doesn’t matter as much as the fire station result, since the react time of fire station can directly influence people’s lives. So, it seems that the accuracy problem is also very important in network GIS when it comes to some special disciplines. One issue structs me is that in what extent can we trust these results. Or, in other words, how can we measure the accuracy and credibility of it?

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