Dynamic Trip Modelling: From Shopping Centres to the Internet: 84 (GeoJournal Library, 84) - Hardcover

Baker, Robert G.V.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1402043457 ISBN 13: 9781402043451

Publisher: Springer, 2006

Synopsis

The thesis of this book is that there are one set of equations that can define any trip between an origin and destination. The idea originally came from work that I did when applying the hydrodynamic analogy to study congested traffic flows in 1981. However, I was disappointed to find out that much of the mathematical work had already been done decades earlier. When I looked for a new application, I realised that shopping centre demand could be like a longitudinal wave, governed by centre opening and closing times. Further, a solution to the differential equation was the gravity model and this suggested that time was somehow part of distance decay. This was published in 1985 and represented a different approach to spatial interaction modelling. The next step was to translate the abstract theory into something that could be tested empirically. To this end, I am grateful to my Ph. D supervisor, Professor Barry Garner who taught me that it is not sufficient just to have a theoretical model. This book is an outcome of this on-going quest to look at how the evolution of the model performs against real world data. This is a far more difficult process than numerical simulations, but the results have been more valuable to policy formulation, and closer to what I think is spatial science. The testing and application of the model required the compilation of shopping centre surveys and an Internet data set.

About this title

Review

From the reviews:

"It combines in a single volume much of the work that Baker has been conducting since 1985 on his RASTT model. ... the book contains sufficient ideas for readers to bridge this gap themselves and be inspired by the richness of the ideas discussed." (Harry Timmermans, Journal of Regional Science, Vol. 48 (5), 2008)

Synopsis

Walking from a parked car to a shop, driving to a planned or unplanned shopping centre and virtual exchanges through the Internet are all part of 21st century trips in human activity spaces. Can these diversified types of trips be linked in a common framework? In a bold and innovative analysis, the author shows how such a diversity of trips can be linked by a universal vision of spatial interaction modelling. He uses one special differential equation, describing exchanges between time lines, to model both real and virtual trips to shopping centres and through the Internet. These theoretical time lines are part of a time-space convergence, a concept that appeared in the time geography literature at the end of the 1960s. Whilst the spatial contexts are different, the process of time exchanges is the same for both real and virtual trips. It is shown how distance decay is fundamental to this type of interaction and is dependent on the time boundary defining the exchange. Time boundaries can be defined as the trading hours of shopping centres or by the rotation of the Earth.

The startling conclusion is that distance does matter, not only in walking to shops, but in defining the movement of Internet traffic.

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1402043457
• ISBN 13: 9781402043451
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 388