Goals and Background
The objective of Lab 4 was to implement the basic knowledge and skills learned in two ESRI courses introducing the concepts of Network Analysis. The topology and connectivity of networks allow extensive analyses to to be performed to solve a variety of applied problems, from finding the shortest route to point A to point B to minimizing distribution cost for a business. To apply network analysis to UW - Eau Claire, a simple question was asked: What is the shortest route to get from the Haas Fine Arts Center to the L.E. Phillips Science Hall? This is a path that students take almost every day. In 2017, construction began on Garfield avenue and had disrupted the natural flow of pedestrian traffic (Figure 1). The goal was to use Network Analysis to figure out if the route that students had to take during the start of construction was longer of shorter than the route that opened up after the bulk of the construction was finished.
Figure 1: Garfield Avenue construction zone on Lower Campus.
Method
Before beginning to create the network dataset, enable the Network Analysis extension in the Customize tab. In the ArcCatalog window, navigate to and right-click the UWEC routing dataset. Select to create a New Network Dataset. In the New Network Dataset window, choose uwec_paths as the edges that will be participating in the network. Run through the steps in setting up the network dataset. Select to model turns. Use elevation fields. Don't use traffic data with the network dataset. In the Evaluators tab, change the value for uwec_paths to shape-length. Set the travel mode to walk and distance impedance to meters. Finish and build the network dataset.
Once the network dataset is built, add it to the viewing window. Open the Network Analysis toolbar. Make sure that it is set to the new dataset. Select New Route under the Network Analysis toolbar drop down window. Open the Network Analysis window from the toolbar and dock it below the Table of Contents. Right-click Stops and choose Load Locations. Load the uwec_stops feature and use objectID field and the default value of 1 to select the first stop near the Haas Fine Arts Center. Afterwords, go the Route Properties and in the Analysis Settings tab, set the impedance to length (meters). Finally solve the route. This gives the route that students take now (Figure 2). To analyze the other route, right-click Barriers and choose Load Locations. Load the uwec-barrier feature and use the objectID field and the default value of 1 to select the first barrier. Afterwards, solve the route again (Figure 3).
Results
The first route that the Network Analysis generated had a length of approximately 429.9 meters (Figure 2). If the average pedestrian walking speed in 5 km/hr, then the travel time for Route 1 is approximately 5.16 minutes. The second route that the Network Analysis generated had a length of approximately 517.4 meters and a travel time of approximately 6.21 minutes. The shortest route was Route 1, the route that was opened up recently for students. It was approximately 87.5 meters shorter and 1.05 minutes shorter to traverse. Students lost a little over a minute going to classes when construction blocked major sidewalks in 2017.
Figure 2: Route 1 generated the shorter and current route that students take.
Figure 3: Route two generated the previous route students took during the bulk of the construction.
Sources
UW- Eau Claire (n.d.) Garfield Avenue Redesign. Retrieved from https://www.uwec.edu/facprojects/garfield.htm.
Curtis, C. (2018) UWEC_paths.
Curtis, C. (2018) UWEC_stops.
Curtis, C. (2018) UWEC_barrier.
ESRI (2018) World Topographic Map. Retrieved from https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=30e5fe3149c34df1ba922e6f5bbf808f.
