A New Approach to Network Generation and Map Representation: The Linear Case of the Location‐Allocation Problem*

THE OBJECTIVE OF NETWORK GENERATION PROCEDURE CAN BE VIEWED AS THE SELECTION OF LOCATIONS FOR TRUNK LINES WHICH MAXIMIZE THE TOTAL ACCESSIBILITY FOR A GIVEN SET OF DEMAND POINTS. THE PROCEDURE PRESENTED IS IN A VERY PRELIMINARY STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT, THOUGH IT COULD BE EASILY MODIFIED SO THAT THE METHOD WOULD BE MORE SENSITIVE TO THE ACTUAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF EITHER NETWORK GENERATION OR MAP REPRESENTATION. EXPERIMENTS WITH THE PATTERN OF 55 CITIES AND TOWNS OF SOUTHERN ONTARIO AND QUEBEC HAVE EVALUATED LINE SEGMENT REPRESENTATIONS OF POINT PATTERNS IN THE LIGHT OF THREE CRITERIA: THE GOODNESS OF FIT AS MEASURED BY THE MEAN OF ORTHOGONAL DEVIATIONS FROM EVERY POINT TO ITS NEAREST LINE SEGMENT; THE TOTAL LENGTH OF ALL OF THE LINE SEGMENTS; AND THE COMPLEXITY OF THE NETWORK AS INDEXED BY THE TOTAL NUMBER OF LINE SEGMENTS. /AUTHOR/