Isoscope a New Way to Explore and Visualize Mobility

Isoscope a New Way to Explore and Visualize Mobility

Connaught Place, New Delhi Travel Time 4 min Drak Blue Shape Visualize Pedestrain

Connaught Place, New Delhi
Travel Time 4 min
Drak Blue Shape Visualize Pedestrain

We have been using Google Maps to find out the directions, distance and even real time navigation with estimated travel time according to traffic situations.

But a team of developer in supervision of Till Nagel at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam has come up with an entirely different solution for the travelers to visualize and analysis their travelling experiences in quite a different manner.

Isoscope does not provide the similar services as does by Google Maps. But Isoscope is a very unique and an interactive tool that creates aesthetic visuals about locations that are reachable by car or by a pedestrian in a chosen time from a chosen location.  Isoscope is more a way to find or check out the mobility in areas where the traffic conditions changes from hours to hours.

The idea behind the development of Isoscope is coming through our daily situations when our mobility is compromised by traffic jams or during tough driving conditions. Once stuck in traffic, mobility changes with the mode of transportation such as if driving a car could take much more time than a motorbike or bicycle is more flexible to continue its journey. In case a pedestrian then who can stroll whenever he wants to.

Image Courtesy: Isoscope

Image Courtesy: Isoscope

Isoscope tries to answer the questions above by comparing different means of transport and their sensitivity for disturbances. The traffic conditions vary hour to hour and places to places. Once stuck in bad traffic condition, will take a longer time to cover a smaller distance.

Keeping this in the background, the developers have developed an online display tool with a map and the organic shape layers of 24 boundaries of reachability, while one layer represents one hour of the day.

With Isoscope one can easily see and compare the influence of traffic conditions on our mobility or compare the reach of different means of transport. Within or among cities. Worldwide.

As we advanced in the ideation of Isoscope and agreed on some kind of organic shapes representing our “mobility scope”, we made our first programming steps in Processing using the HERE API. Initially, we tried to calculate all possible routes from a given location within a specific time. Only afterwards we came across the HERE Isoline API that calculates areas reachable within a given time automatically. Since we wanted Isoscope to be platform-independent, we changed the programming environment from Processing to JavaScript. Several iterations regarding the look of the shapes, map style and UI elements and functionality finally led to Isoscope V 1.0.

The following are the two related projects as Isoscope. The first, Mapnificent by Stefan Wehrmeyaeer, shows areas one can reach by public transport in a given time using idealistic time table data instead of real time data as of Isoscope and is available for major cities of  the world.

The second project is Public Transit Travel Time by Andrew Hardin, uses uses a heatmap to show transit travel times in 8 major US cities.

 Developer team of Isoscope:

Flavio GortanaSebastian Kaim and Martin von Lupin supervised by Till Nagel during the class “Urbane Ebenen: Mobilität” at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam

 

Source: Isoscope

Categories: GIS

About Author

GIS Resources

GIS Resources is an initiative of Spatial Media and Services Enterprises with the purpose that everyone can enrich their knowledge and develop competitiveness. GIS Resources is a global platform, for latest and high-quality information source for the geospatial industry, brings you the latest insights into the developments in geospatial science and technology.

Write a Comment

Your e-mail address will not be published.
Required fields are marked*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.