Reconstruction of Western Europe’s pre-motorway road network back to 1500

Open access
Date
2018-01Type
- Conference Paper
ETH Bibliography
yes
Altmetrics
Abstract
This paper presents the construction of a new historical road network data set, capturing conditions between 1500 and 1900, focusing on the 19 th and 18 th century. It continuous the work presented at TRB in 2015 on Reconstruction of 1950s Global Road Network Using American Army Maps. It covers Western Europe. The main part of this paper reports in detail the heuristics used, which were established based on an assessment of 900 or so collected historical transport related documents, mostly transport maps. Switzerland in 1850 is employed as an example of a geographical information system used to generate historical travel times. As far as the authors can ascertain, such comprehensive and detailed historical transport data has not been available until this point, but it enables examination of various historical and current transport-related research questions using spatial and time-variant data. The purpose of this paper is: first, to report on the reconstruction of these historical road network data and to position it in the existing literature and research tradition; second, to explain how the network is generated; third, to present our approach to model historical generalized travel costs; fourth, show how to use such information by applying it in a Swiss case study. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000204586Publication status
publishedBook title
2018 TRB Annual Meeting OnlinePages / Article No.
Publisher
Transportation Research BoardEvent
Subject
Historical transport data; 1500-1900; Western Europe; Path dependencyOrganisational unit
03521 - Axhausen, Kay W. (emeritus) / Axhausen, Kay W. (emeritus)
02226 - NSL - Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft / NSL - Network City and Landscape
02655 - Netzwerk Stadt u. Landschaft ARCH u BAUG / Network City and Landscape ARCH and BAUG
Related publications and datasets
Is variant form of: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/204583
More
Show all metadata
ETH Bibliography
yes
Altmetrics