Abstract
Abstract. The Spanish National Geographic Institute (IGN) published the first release of the Geographic Reference Information on Transport Networks (GRI-TN) in March 2017. Its main goal was to fulfil INSPIRE Directive requirements, as well as to become the main data source for other products developed by the IGN regarding this theme. During the years following that first release, the focus has been on updating and improving the data. This fact has encouraged new data use cases, which differ from the initially planned ones, have arisen, allowing to detect problems in the data, and highlighting the need to evolve the data model, as well as the way in which they are provided to users (not only formats, but also update frequency). One of those use cases is finding the shortest paths between different points in the area covered by the Road Transport Network. In this article, the methodology used to do it is exposed; likewise, the setbacks that have come up during the process and the current limitations of the GRI-TN datasets in order to get most accurate results.
Highlights
In July 2020, personnel from the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge (MITECO, hereinafter) contacted IGN to consider the possibility of calculating the cost in time and the distance in kilometres from the capital of each one from the municipalities of Spain to the nearest hospital, the nearest municipality with more than 20.000 inhabitants and the closest municipality with more than 50.000 inhabitants
After evaluating the available tools and the state of the data, it was decided to use the sections of the road network collected in the Geographic Reference Information on Transport Networks (GRI-TN) database, located on a PostgreSQL server, using the attributes of said sections such as the type of section, the type of road, the type of road, etc., to estimate the average speed in them, and the functions of the pgRouting extension to calculate the routes and their associated costs
This research shows a particular case of use of GRI-TN road network data
Summary
In July 2020, personnel from the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge (MITECO, hereinafter) contacted IGN to consider the possibility of calculating the cost in time and the distance in kilometres from the capital of each one from the municipalities of Spain to the nearest hospital, the nearest municipality with more than 20.000 inhabitants and the closest municipality with more than 50.000 inhabitants The reason for this request was based on a study that sought to assess the risk of depopulation in Spanish municipalities, and which took the distance from the various socio-cultural and health facilities and services as one of the factors that a priori could contribute to increasing said risk. After evaluating the available tools and the state of the data, it was decided to use the sections of the road network collected in the GRI-TN database, located on a PostgreSQL server, using the attributes of said sections such as the type of section (trunk, interchange, service road, etc.), the type of road (highway, highway, conventional road, etc.), the type of road (double or single), etc., to estimate the average speed in them, and the functions of the pgRouting extension to calculate the routes and their associated costs
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