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Samweli edited this page Sep 9, 2016 · 9 revisions

Welcome to the Isochrones plugin wiki!

Problem we are trying to solve:

No tool to create and illustrate times to reach or access to certain service areas. This leads to massive long work to produce and show isomaps that can easily show accessibility of the provided service areas.

Development:

We have developed an open source tool that can be used in a qgis application called isochrones, to help creating and show different equal drive times to specified service areas.

Getting started:

The isochrones tool is an open source software developed to help creation of accessibility maps. It aims on producing maps and data, from dedicated routing algorithms. The tool can be used in Qgis as a plugin, currently the tool use the provided network and catchment areas data to create the required accessibility maps. Here are example of maps produced from the plugin.

First Isochrones map Second Isochrones map

How does Isochrones Work (Demo):

The tool requires postgresql database to be installed with a postgis extension. Then user should load the network and catchment area data into the database. lt can now be used through Qgis as a plugin. You can download this plugin from the Qgis plugin repository. The plugin can be found in the Database menu, after installation. Starting it will give you the following interface.

Column Description
Database The name of the database you have stored the data
Host Host name where the database can be accessed.
Port Computer port number where the database service is hosted.
Username User name used to connect to the database, this should have root access on the database.
Password Password used to connect to the database
Network table Table containing imported network data
Id column Unique identifier in the table, should be integer
Geometric column Column contain geometric values for the data table
Catchment table Table containing imported service areas data
Drivetime Interval Interval for the drivetime needed, now input is in minutes

Step by Step:

  1. For testing download here the catchment test data and network test data.
  2. Import the shapefiles in your postgres database, make note of the unique ids and geometry columns in both data. These important columns that will be needed when using the plugin, this include the unique identifier and geometric column for both tables
  3. Start the plugin in Qgis, fill in the required details. Click OK to start the analysis.
  4. There is an option for creating a default map for the results, if not checked the final result will be points each with drivetime.

If you check the "Create isochrones map style" this will generate tin and contour with a default style.
You can watch the demo video here

Datasets metadata:

  1. Network Feature Type: Line Size: 156kb Area: Dar es salaam, Tanzania

  2. Catchment Feature Type: Point or Polygon. Size: 3.3kb Area: Dar es salaam, Tanzania

Milestones:

  1. Make the tool multimodal, add public transport and bicycle modes.