Drive time isochrones airports northern Finland

An isochrone map in

geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, an ...

and

urban planning Urban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water, ...

is a map that depicts the area accessible from a point within a certain time threshold. An isochrone (iso = equal, chrone = time) is defined as "a line drawn on a map connecting points at which something occurs or arrives at the same time". In

hydrology Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and environmental watershed sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is call ...

and

transportation planning Transportation planning is the process of defining future policies, goals, investments, and spatial planning designs to prepare for future needs to move people and goods to destinations. As practiced today, it is a collaborative process that ...

isochrone maps are commonly used to depict areas of equal travel time. The term is also used in

cardiology Cardiology () is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the heart and the cardiovascular system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular h ...

as a tool to visually detect abnormalities using body surface distribution.

History

Isochronic Passage Chart Francis Galton 1881

Early examples of Isochrone maps include the Galton's ''Isochronic Postal Charts'' and ''Isochronic Passage Charts'' of 1881 and 1882, Bartholomew's ''Isochronic Distance Map and Chart'' first published 1889 and Albrecht Penck's ''Isochronenkarte'' first published 1887. Where as Galton and the Bartholomews published maps depicting the days or weeks it took to travel long distances, Albrecht further developed the idea to not only depict long distances and world travel but also smaller areas. Penck also created a series of maps that only depict the travel times of a certain transportation mode, for example

Rail transport Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a prep ...

. Isochrone maps are commonly used in the UK in connection with development control. Isochrones are currently typically computed by via generating

shortest-path tree In mathematics and computer science, a shortest-path tree rooted at a vertex ''v'' of a connected, undirected graph ''G'' is a spanning tree ''T'' of ''G'', such that the path distance from root ''v'' to any other vertex ''u'' in ''T'' is the short ...

s on network graphs, and then generating a

convex hull In geometry, the convex hull or convex envelope or convex closure of a shape is the smallest convex set that contains it. The convex hull may be defined either as the intersection of all convex sets containing a given subset of a Euclidean space ...

around the accessible nodes. Increases in computation, data storage, and improvements in algorithms have facilitated the rapid generation of isochrones. Recent techniques in visualization include linking travel times to network edges to show the paths accessible from a point rather than show the area accessible from a point.

Usage

Hydrology

Isochrone and related maps are used to show the time taken for

runoff Runoff, run-off or RUNOFF may refer to: * RUNOFF, the first computer text-formatting program * Runoff or run-off, another name for bleed, printing that lies beyond the edges to which a printed sheet is trimmed * Runoff or run-off, a stock marke ...

water within a

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, ...

to reach a lake, reservoir or outlet, assuming constant and uniform effective rainfall. An early example of this method was demonstrated by Clark in 1945.

Transport planning

Isochrone maps have been used in transportation planning since at least 1887. Isochrone maps in the context of transport planning are essentially maps of

accessibility Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i. ...

where travel time is used as the cost metric. Isochrone maps can be created for different modes of transportation, e.g. foot, bicycle, motor vehicle. Put simply, the output of an isochrone map for transport will show how far (in distance) is reachable from a start point, including the parameter of time. Such maps for private motor transport were widely used in a 1972 study into airport accessibility in

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...

South East England South East England is one of the nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. It consists of the counties of Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Berkshi ...

. At that time, their use was disadvantaged by being time-consuming to create. The term isodapane map is used to refer to a map were the contour represent transportation ''cost'' instead of transportation ''time''. Toronto travel times from downtown

General public

Journey time websites have been built using mapping technologies and

open data Open data is data that is openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shared by anyone for any purpose. Open data is licensed under an open license. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-source)" movements ...

. Isochrones can be used by house hunters wishing to evaluate

residential area A residential area is a land used in which housing predominates, as opposed to industrial and commercial areas. Housing may vary significantly between, and through, residential areas. These include single-family housing, multi-family resi ...

s. An isochrone map of the

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The ...

network was made available in 2007. A time-based travel map that went viral was th
Isochronic World Map
produced using data from Rome2rio's routing engine for plane, train, bus, ferry and automobile. It compared travel times from London in 2016 versus 1914.

Services and applications

Several digital tools exist which can generate isochrone maps. openstreetmap-based solutions:
CommuteTimeMap
- lets to build and visualize isochrones worldwide
Geoapify Isochrone API
- API service to build isochrones for drive, truck, bicycle, walk and transit modes. Worldwide. * GraphHopperbr>
https://github.com/graphhopper/graphhopper/pull/1237] can be used to calculate a detailed time information for every point within a certain time or distance reach.
GRASS
v.net.iso module
instaGIS
ref name="instaGIS">
Iso4App
Public Transport Isochrone maps (Isochrones based on GTFS data)
Mapbox Isochrone API
(interactiv
Mapbox
example) *

Mapumental Mapumental was a web-based application for displaying journeys in terms of how long they take, rather than by distance, a technique also known as isochrone or geospatial mapping. It was developed by British organisation mySociety but was withdra ...

OpenRouteServiceIsochrones Service
- uses OSM data and map, shows isochrones worldwide (no source code available)
OpenTripPlanner
- a development branch has work on an Analytics Extension, which currently provides isochrones based on the OSM network and

GTFS GTFS, which stands for General Transit Feed Specification or (originally) Google Transit Feed Specification, defines a common format for public transportation schedules and associated geographic information. GTFS contains only static or schedul ...

data (source code available)
OSRM Isochrone
Generate drivetime isochrones from OSM using OSRM.
pgRouting
The creation of journey time isochrones to airports in

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

has been explained using the

GIS software A GIS software program is a computer program to support the use of a geographic information system, providing the ability to create, store, manage, query, analyze, and visualize geographic data, that is, data representing phenomena for which ...

QGIS QGIS is a free and open-source cross-platform desktop geographic information system (GIS) application that supports viewing, editing, printing, and analysis of geospatial data. Functionality QGIS functions as geographic information system (GIS ...

and pgRouting (an extension of

PostGIS PostGIS ( ) is an open source software program that adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. PostGIS follows the Simple Features for SQL specification from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Technica ...

).
pysochrone
is a

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

script and simple web interface for computing and displaying isochrones from an OGR-supported data source (e.g.

)
Reachability Analysis
An application (built using WhereOS and OSM data) which calculates reachability (isochrone) from given set of addresses. * Safe Routes to School Mapping Toolkit - working to create travel distance/time web app for pedestrians and bicyclists using OSM data (source code available)
TargomoAPI
- Travel times, Routing, Points of Interests, Isochrones - developer tools to build state-of-the-art geospatial analytics applications, enhance location search, and personalize user experience. (Interactiv