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1. 3 The Confeego tools suite Confeego has been developed to support the various phases of a consultancy or research project and in that sense consists of several tools that are grouped according to the type of tasks involved These tasks fall generally under the categories of data translation data collection map process ing data analysis and data visualisation The first group deals with the transfer of general data from and to other applications the second with the entry of data collected during pedestrian observations or built environment surveys the third with the processing of axial or convex maps in various ways the fourth with the statistical analysis of the results and analysis across multiple information layers the final group with the graphic display of the results Once Confeego is installed a Space Syntax menu becomes available in MapInfo s menu bar from which the users can access the individual tools The menu is organised according to the above groups Below is a brief description of each of the tools included in the current release of Confeego 3 1 Data translation Import map data Creates the geometry from a text file containing pairs of x y coordinates defining points or lines importing as well any attributes associated with these objects for further spatial analysis This tool is useful as a generic importer of processed results from other space syntax analysis software Import UCL Depthmap line data Imports the res
2. Normally the d value of n 3 and n 22 will be as follows d value 3 0 21089661 d value 22 0 21428572 Typing the following function definition in Segmen will override the existing definition and let d value to compute G instead Listing 4 Overriding the definition of built in d value defun d value n 2 n sqrt n 2 n 1 n 1 n 2 Now if you issue d value d value 3 0 19615221 d value 22 0 28661498 32 Segmen and write data will produce integration values using a new definition of d value Following is a further example of the Common Lisp code which implements the user s own version of functions that calculate total depth of the axial lines Listing 5 Alternative definition for calculating total depth footnotesize begin verbatim 33 this is an example shown in the Segmen Reference Manual 335 33 my bfs sub is called from within my bfs and it has 4 arguments 33 7 id list A list of axial ID which are current depth Sua steps away from the root space 333 7 done id list A list of axial ID which have already been inspected 33 7 current depth The axial lines in id list have this depth 333 7 total depth acc An accumulator for counting total depth 299 defun my bfs sub id list done id list current depth total depth acc if null id list total depth acc my bfs sub remove if lambda x or member x id list member x d
3. WebmapAtHome Confeego Tool Set for Spatial Configuration Studies Jorge Gil Chris Stutz and Alain Chiaradia Space Syntax Limited London UK Abstract Confeego is a suite of tools to understand and harness the effects of spatial configuration in urban systems or complex buildings developed by Space Syntax Limited and is available free for academic use Confeego has been developed to support the various phases of a consultancy or research project and in that sense consists of several tools that are grouped according to the type of tasks involved These tasks fall generally under the categories of data translation data collection map processing axial convex and isovists data analysis and data visualisation Confeego is a plug in for the MapInfo Professional GIS running on Windows and this has several implications in the use of the software It might not be ideal for space syntax beginners with no GIS experience but it offers the classic space syntax tools plus it can import results from different space syntax software and the user benefits from functionality for querying displaying and analysing multiple layers of information For those who require the analysis of large complex systems combining a multitude of data sources and several types of analysis Confeego provides an adequate work platform 1 Introduction Confeego is a suite of tools to understand and harness the effects of spatial configuration in urban systems or complex buildings
4. visibility graphs typical have an order of magnitude greater numbers of spatial units and further orders of magnitude greater numbers of connections between them Thus UCL Depthmap needed to be fast Very fast For that reason it is written in the C programming language This language has the advantage that it is compiled i e it is optimised to work on a single operating system In the case of UCL Depthmap the operating system it is designed for is Microsoft Windows whether that is Windows 2000 XP or Vista does not matter The 44 UCL Depthmap Fpbamsburyirah OOOO Rly amp BH GNIS tt Ry a O 8 Ni cae Ready i816 829 107 x 1099 86 530662 184315 A Figure 1 Spatial units analysed by UCL Depthmap points forming visibility graphs isovists axial lines and segment Visibility graphs isovists and axial lines may be generated automatically through the software while segment maps may be derived from axial maps or imported directly from GIS as road centre line maps result is that not only can visibility graph analysis be performed within a reasonable amount of time but also that axial or segment analysis of huge systems is feasible Thus an axial map of the whole of London within the M25 can be analysed within an hour on a current desktop PC with the angular segment analysis of the same map taking of the order of a day However the disadvantage of this optimisation is
5. 2 2 2 z arfa g 3 3 fi 3 i 1590 os51424 oer z o zerzs ososon 12200 411 aoooncroooo0og Figure 2 Workspace showing the maps and attributes from axial convex and isovist processing Site photos Tool for manual geo referencing site photos on a base map indicating position and direction of the photo address plus additional notes 3 3 Processing Integration This tool calculates the classic measures of connectivity integration and control Hillier and Hanson 1984 It can process maps of any type of intersecting spatial object such as axial lines and convex polygons In addition integration can be calculated for the junctions where such objects intersect There are no built in limits to the number of objects that can be processed in each map although performance will vary according to map size and computer system specification This tool is often used to verify the integrity of the axial map in relation to unconnected lines or sub systems Unlinks manager Tool that supports the process of creating and verifying the map unlinks these indicate that two intersecting objects cross physically at different levels Point depth Calculates the topological step or metric depth from o
6. Axman by incorporating some of the peripheral supporting programs such as JamesChoice Dalton 1994 At its core WebmapAthome differentiates itself from other axial and segmental analysis programs by being largely self contained This emerged from the pedagogical aim of having an application usable by those with some basic familiarity with basic vector drawing programmes and could be used with minimal support and training in a more academic context To promote the sharing of information to aide general verification of space syntax and be a resource new to space syntax and space syntax techniques it was felt that the software should not depend upon other software For example it would require less initial programmatic effort to produce a filter or a plugin to CAD or GIS software but it was felt that many schools of archi tecture would not have GIS software and this would require explorative users to invest heavily in the purchase and training to use a powerful CAD or GIS package like Microstation or ArcInfo 8 WebmapAtHome F WebmapAtHome2 File Edit Calculate Generate Tools Windows rooe barns4 diamii axl BEATIE C save IC oor Gis 30x 184 JQ Scattergram H m rA Integration be 4 T2 0 2067 m U p 3 gt J if aaa Figure 1 WebmapAtHome While use of external editing software can facilitate the rapid development of software for a re searcher s personal use it has been found through long
7. Figure 4 Count objects This tool allows the user to count the occurrence of objects with particular attributes within polygonal regions that can be regular grid cells convex spaces or isovists It can be used for example to quantify the occurrence of types of crime static activity or entrances within those regions 20 Confeego RSS sSee a al Figure 4 Workspace showing the integration of MapInfo with the JMP statistical package Building to axial linker Given a buildings and an axial or segment map this tool creates a links table that can be used to transfer attributes from the buildings layer like socio economic land use or construction data onto the corresponding spatial objects and vice versa for further statistical analysis 3 5 Visualisation Multiple ranges maps This tool produces maps of processed spatial objects axial segment or convex according to multiple quantitative measures using a selection of colour ranges Multiple gate count maps This tool produces maps of gates of multiple time periods accord ing to their pedestrian count values following a user defined range Percentile charts Creates a series of histograms for analysing the distribution of attributes of any spatial object 4 A Spatial configuration analysis platform Confeego runs integrated in a GIS platform and consists of a range of tools for tasks at var
8. L 7 32820 86 1 71983e 006 m z 34173 6 _1 85646e 006 34230 2_1 91212e 006 4194405 17495 4 613540 Agent Counts 473 i3318 175 15 x 179 044 87 0364 32 4353 Ready Figure 3 Data support in UCL Depthmap a table view scattergram and the SalaScript entry dialog box to create a derived column to geometry MapInfo handles this inelegantly with two files per table one for the geometry one for the data while UCL Depthmap combines both into a single graph file Text files do allow simple geometry such as points or lines to be imported but polygons must be imported seperately In addition to import UCL Depthmap now supports familiar interfaces such as table views to enter numeric data such as observed gate counts more easily 8 Scattergrams Scattergrams are a familiar tool for space syntax practitioners and were an early innovation in Axman Dalton 1988a The ability to produce a scattergram quickly can give insights into measures without having to export the data to a stats package Furthermore since UCL Depthmap allows you to push values to gates and to import observation data to gates see the section on Data layers above the scattergram feature can also be used to test hypotheses on observed usage of spaces with any spatial feature isovist axial line or segment In addition to choosing the x and y attributes to be displayed the scattergrams in UCL Depthmap allow an independent choice of the colour
9. Operation To broaden the appeal of syntactical processing it was felt that it was important to be platform neutral to this end WebmapAthome is written in a common form of Java that can run on N S Dalton 9 many platforms capable of running the JavaRunime For many target users the Java runtime is preinstalled and if not it can be easily down loaded from the Java website This means that the whole interface and operational design had to be interoperable on both Mac Unix and Windows PC This has a secondary benefit of insulating the user from problems caused by operating system upgrades 4 Information exchange It has already been mentioned above that WebmapAthome can import DXF but this is not the only form of information exchange WebmapAthome can also import binary Axman Maps so permitting access to a large database of historic axial maps This has the secondary benefit that the values of the standard syntactical calculations have been checked on a like for like basis To provide maximum functionality axial lines can also be imported as end coordinate pairs suitable for export from generative applications or GIS systems Once imported the maps can be automatically rotated to allow for coordinate system changes centred and scaled to fit the publishing coordinates used WebmapAthome can also export in a number of formats including graph network for mats DOT Koutsofios and North 1993 and Pajek de Nooy et al 2005 and can also pr
10. analysis below In addition to the visual relationships between points in a dense grid visibility graph UCL Depthmap 7 also has the facility to produce point isovists themselves These are generated with an eye dropper tool to allow full flexibility for the user although they can also be locked onto an existing grid or vertices by holding down control keys while using the tool Geometric properties of the isovist such as area and perimeter as well as some of Benedikt s measures are calculated Furthermore there is a half isovist tool to allow the user to understand the shape of the visibility cone when looking in a particular direction for example on a walk through a building similar to the sorts of measures for which Omnivista Conroy Dalton and Dalton 2001 was developed 3 Agent analysis UCL Depthmap has an agent analysis module incorporated into it This allows users to perform the agent based analysis presented in Turner and Penn 2002 as well as several enhancements of it In agent based analysis virtual people called agents or animats are released into the environment and make decisions on where to move within it The agents require a visibility graph in order for them to have vision of the environment however the analysis appears to give a better correspondence with where people actually move than traditional measures of point visibility graphs in addition to being much faster to calculate The original agen
11. at human behavior is widely sig nificant providing a platform for a detailed study of the relationship between syntactic variables and the complex aggregate patterns of movement In addition to this set of features there are several minor improvements of note Within the point isovist tool users have the option of subdividing isovists to obtain additional measures Our visibility analysis automatically detects enclosed spaces and offers complete control of both grid spacing and starting point VGA visualizations have full color depth and display a reference scale figure 2 While this is an early version we think it shows great promise In the long term we hope to improve the depth of the software with a greater variety of measures and its breadth with more analysis types such as J Graphs Ultimately we hope that researchers will find Syntax2D useful enough that they would like to help us improve upon it 2 Licensing and development Syntax2D is free to download from the University of Michigan so long as users agree to the terms of the open source license This allows the user to install and run the program for academic research as well as to view and modify the source code Users are under no obligation to share J Wineman J Turner S Psarra S K Jung N Senske 25 ee 0 T py Mi T ex a a i Nun Figure 2 VGA analysis with full color depth and a reference scale display any modifications they make but can
12. be tested against spatial values as well as data obtained from observation studies Users can load a path from within a drawing and use it to generate isovists from a series of observation points From here the cumulative isovist of the path is shown and the data from each of these points is analyzed according to several measures Another option for this tool is to generate isovists with a user specified cone of vision Syntax2D is capable of representing data visually from the point measures as well 24 Syntax2D Osea SV oe e nes Hie Eo Ae oy ee NR at ress mu Figure 1 A path isovist visualisation showing area values For example the area value of each isovist can be displayed as a colored circle along a path figure 1 A greater radius and a red hue might denote a larger relative isovist area Finally we have included a path counting tool that can count the number of times a path crosses a VGA cell and a point counting tool that will count how many points appear in each VGA cell These tools have already proven to be great time savers in our own research In the future we will add output measures related to a number of behavior characteristics such as direction seeking and direction change in a navigable space Each cell is given an attribute based on such measures The results can be statistically processed and interfaced with data from visibility analysis The usefulness of this tool and its applicability in studies looking
13. each other on the plan but are not considered as neighbours Essentially this means to instruct Segmen to prohibit from considering the movement from line A to line B and or the movement from B to A despite the fact that the two look connected Axial and segment unlinks are maintained separately but the effect of axial unlinks naturally spills into the generation of the segment maps which means the axial unlinks must be applied before building topology whereas segment unlinks only affect the topology of segment map Virtual links vlinks are those which connect two axial lines segments that do not have a natural direct connection Once connected they provide a one way two way connection between those elements but they are represented internally quite differently from normal links Segment vlinks are set up so that they can be accessed regardless of the direction which the route is being made in the linking segments conceptually the vlink is located in the middle of the segment and it can be used from both directions of the originating segment and it can go to any one of two directions that are available in the destination segment Segment vlinks are also reflected in the axial vlinks but if axial vlinks are added manually they will not be reflected in segment vlinks In general axial vlinks can be considered as truly virtual existence and their locations are absolutely undefined It is also true that vlinks are not naturally associated w
14. experience that there are a number of long term problems associated with parasitic development From the human computer interaction point of view the users are frequently expected to be competent or highly competent users of the host platform Secondly the integration of tool with the host environment becomes complex and requiring expertise at the point of integration For example processing might require the user to export and then import into the computation engine If this does happen it is quite possible the user inadvertently reprocesses an inappropriate version Thirdly most CAD and GIS software applications fail to provide appropriate sophisticated statistical and data mining tools This can be remedied by the integration of yet more software but this makes the whole application unwieldy for novice or occasional users Finally parasitic applications can suffer from host creep that is the host applications tend to rapidly evolve making plugins and cooperative programs from following versions inoperable WebmapAthome takes the proven path of developing self contained software leading to an application than can be freely exchanged Importantly WebmapAthome does take steps to operate in expert mode by offering the ability to import data via vector based DXF transfer This permits data axial line preparation in such as GIS CAD and CAAD applications Importantly once in the data can be repaired as errors are uncovered through processing 3
15. in either case starting from a superset of the lines drawn by hand and then reducing down in some way The algorithm in UCL Depthmap begins by generating the all line axial map a feature which is not novel but has been available since SpaceBox was written Dalton 1988b The novel feature is the algorithm UCL Depthmap uses to reduce this set to the traditional fewest line axial map by using a subset reduction algorithm Turner et al 2005 However despite an easy interface to create these maps as with isovist generation using an eye dropper tool to drop the lines into open space it should be borne in mind that the algorithm actually only represents a minor advance on the Spatialist program Peponis et al 1998 which takes a more rigourous approach to the definition of possible lines and performs a similar reduction UCL Depthmap s advantage is an algorithm which is more general and implemented to run faster 5 Interrelationships All these three analyses may seem fairly arbitrary to include in a single program so in a couple of recent papers I have tried to delve into the relationships between agent axial and point visibility A Turner 47 analyses This has produced new sorts of agents which move according to occluded edges and new sorts of isovist analysis through vision In Turner 2007a I examine the relationship of agents to axial lines If agents are programmed to move towards occluding edges rather tha
16. is created from the units either by explicitly stating links or calculated from overlap or adjacency The space syntax measures themselves are measures of the graph rather than of the map Thus the connectivity of each spatial unit mean depth or unique to space syntax integration is calculated in exactly the same way for each type of component This means that any tool that analyses one sort of spatial network can easily work with any other and hence UCL Depthmap has filled out to a more general tool to analyse spatial networks with analysis of isovists lines and segments with convex spaces polygons to follow shortly It is also important to note the two stage mechanism of the process map creation then graph analysis Indeed UCL Depthmap began life as two separate programs one to build the network automatically from a set of points and one to perform the graph analysis Thus more than any other tool UCL Depthmap is focused on map generation both to create isovists and visual networks for visibility graph analysis as well axial networks for axial line analysis As discussed UCL Depthmap started out as a tool measure networks of isovists O Sullivan and Turner 2001 showed that a graph of isovists can be thought of as a visual network that is as points connected by visibility relationships Although the measurement of the visibility graph is identical to the analysis of the axial graph there is one important diffence between the two
17. necessarily report their work in papers rather within the code they write but in addition it serves another important purpose relating the issue of repeatability A program may develop over time and the algorithms it employs may change as it does so therefore if an experiment is to be repeatable a scientist must be able to vi Preface find the program that ran the experiment in the first place Consequently I would like to add to Wineman et al s demand to reference the original authors of software and demand that the version of the software used is also explicitly referenced While Wineman et al argue for academic accountability lida takes on its counterpart aca demic rigour with his Segmen tool Segmen is an old style command line program meaning that the user must type in instructions for it to work but it has been put together with such painstaking care that its measures can be considered a benchmark for other programs Iida mar ries this careful approach with extensibility the experienced user can themselves rewrite many parts within his program in order to investigate new measures or different algorithmic approaches Segmen as its name suggests primarily exists to analyse segmented systems where axial lines are chopped at their intersections leading to new measures from the axial basis Stahle et al s Place Syntax tool also extends axial analysis but in another direction that of including axial steps as part of th
18. scale thus meaning that three dimensions of data are displayed This has already proved useful in discussion of how depth count and integration of lines co vary at different radii 9 Derived columns and selection by formulae Derived columns will be familiar to users of Statview MapInfo and also other space syntax software They are equivalent to the Espresso feature of later versions of Axman Dalton 1988a Essentially you can write your own measures based on those you already have For example mean depth divided by integration UCL Depthmap has its own mini language A Turner 49 called SalaScript in which to write your own measures In SalaScript mean depth divided by integration is written getValue Mean Depth getValue Integration The Tools menu has a section called Attributes with options to allow you to overwrite the current column with your formula or to create a new column In addition you can also select using a formula on the Edit menu For example you might want to select all axial lines with connectivity between 3 and 5 You could do this with the Sala script line getValue Connectivity lt 3 amp amp getValue Connectivity lt 5 literally select all axial lines where connectivity is greater or equal to 3 and connectivity is less than or equal to 5 You might then use the selection to perform further operations such as step depth from this set At the moment there i
19. who or what is exposed to It tells us something about the spatial strategies 2 SPOT used to form and inhibit social relations through space This paper provides a technical description of SPOT and example of how a graph is produced As the software is not complete we will also discuss further development 2 Platform and technical specification SPOT is written in Java and thus it is platform independent it runs in Windows Mac and Unix machines Because it is written in Java and therefore it is strictly Object Oriented it is intended to be modular and easy to re use allowing the specific modules for calculating isovists their graphs and topological relations to be used in different contexts and in combination with other Java packages The intention of SPOT is to build a platform that will allow future expansions and research not merely to provide a solution to a specific problem SPOT also implements a simple user interface and it is the intention keeping it simple and easy to use if necessary to divide functionality in to different programs which its modularity allows instead of adding features to the existing basic program The calculation process in SPOT starts by reading a file of dxf format which contains a de scription of the two dimensional geometry we want to analyse sections or plans for example and then it breaks that geometry in two wall components made of simple lines This geomet rical description is stored i
20. 1 From isovists to visibility graphs a methodology for the analysis of architectural space Environment and Planning B Planning and Design 28 1 103 121 Syntax2D An Open Source Software Platform for Space Syntax Analysis Jean Wineman James Turner Sophia Psarra Sung Kwon Jung and Nicholas Senske Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning University of Michigan Ann Arbor USA Abstract For space syntax researchers software is an essential tool for the analysis of spatial configuration Unfortunately the proprietary nature of most of this software can inhibit innovation within the field Without the ability to examine others source code we lose a potential resource for learning and an additional point of verification for peer review Moreover without a common base of code researchers must constantly duplicate existing efforts when developing new software As a result of proprietary policies many spatial analysis programs end up limited in scope and become difficult to maintain as their authors move on to other research The development of space syntax is hindered as long as software remains closed and fragmented Towards this end the University of Michigan has developed an open source platform for spatial analysis Syntax2D This software currently features a robust interface combining existing measures such as isovist graph and axial analysis with newer features for path analysis Our goal is for Synax2D to become a col
21. E SetResult res _y_ i while msg quit Quit Figure 1 Software structure of the Place Syntax Tool time by mode and e j is the number of axial steps by mode m The full place syntax formula a geographic accessibility measure with axial lines then looks like this Ai J f g W 0 hT e 4 This formula is the major task for the Place Syntax Tool The tool however also manages to calculate x7 and y j respectively and also a combination of e7 and 77 3 The Place Syntax Tool Together with a group of students at the Department of Numerical Analysis and Computer Sci ence at KTH we have developed the Place Syntax Tool PST an application for the desktop software MapInfo The PST consists of two main components MapBasic MB and Dynamic Link Library DLL The MB component is written in MapBasic and implements reading and writing in MapInfo s own databases The DLL component is written in C C and is com pilated as a DLL It takes care of the graphical user interface GUI and does the accessibility calculations The two communicate through a communication interface integrated within the DLL The GUI has two main windows In the first window all tables are selected input place data plots or address points and output place data where the results will be distributed plots or address points axial lines and unlinks points where crossing axial
22. New Developments in Space Syntax Software Edited by Alasdair Turner ITU Faculty of Architecture Istanbul 2007 Contents Preface v Spatial Positioning Tool SPOT 1 H Markhede P Miranda Carranza WebmapAtHome T N S Dalton Confeego Tool Set for Spatial Configuration Studies 15 J Gil C Stutz A Chiaradia Syntax2D An Open Source Software Platform for Space Syntax Analysis 23 J Wineman J Turner S Psarra S K Jung N Senske Segmen A Programmable Application Environment for Processing Axial Maps 27 S Tida Place Syntax Tool GIS Software for Analysing Geographic Accessibility with Axial Lines 35 A St hle L Marcus A Karlstr m UCL Depthmap 7 From Isovist Analysis to Generic Spatial Network Analysis 43 A Turner iv Contents Preface These proceedings cover the Workshop on New Developments in Space Syntax Software held on 12th June 2007 at the 6th International Space Syntax Symposium Istanbul Technical University This is the first time that the New Developments workshop has its own proceedings In the past the workshop has tended to focus on just one or two pieces of software usually from the historic heart of space syntax research the Bartlett at UCL This has led to undue prominence of the Bartlett in a field where there is an increasing number of contributions from the world over These proceedings have managed to catch a few of the latest programs written to perform space syntax analysis or a
23. Point Second Morr E 7 Global setup D AG be 2 ea 1 Analysis length limestone 20000 u 3 tate_base_ruth Record gate counts in data layer lt None gt v Agent set parameters ar Release rate agents per timestep 0 2 F G Release from any location C Release from selected locations r Agent program parameters Field of view bins Steps before tum decision Timesteps in system 1500 I Record trails for 50 agents Occlusion driven Not occlusion driven a con Ready 13318 175 15x 179 044 16 9106 32 1061 7 Figure 2 Agent based analysis of an environment The screens depicted show the analysis engine output parameter setting dialog and the on screen demo mode based agents in particular are of interest as discussed in the section on Interrelationships below 4 Axial retrieval and analysis The axial analysis in UCL Depthmap is actually a by product of a system already designed to perform graph analysis and the desire to create axial lines from scratch UCL Depthmap s ability to generate axial lines was intended to settle the debate on whether or not there is a simple and correct algorithm underlying the process by which axial maps have traditionally been drawn by hand There are various approaches starting either with an all line map joining up all the vertices or the diagonals through the centres of isovists that is
24. Reference Available online http images autodesk com adsk files acad_dxf pdf Benedikt M L 1979 To take hold of space Isovists and isovist fields Environment and Planning B Planning and Design 6 1 47 65 Grajewski T 1993 The SAS head office spatial configuration and interaction patterns Nordisk Arkitekturforskning 2 63 74 Hall E T 1966 The Hidden Dimension Anchor New York Spacescape 2007 Slussensbetydelse f r stadslivet Appendix to plan changes Markkontoret Stockholm stad St hle A Marcus L Karlstr m A 2005 Place syntax Geographic accessibility with axial lines in GIS In van Nes A Ed Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Space Syntax TU Delft Delft Netherlands pp 131 143 Turner A 2004 Visibility Graph Analysis UCL London Available online http www vr ucl ac uk research vga Turner A Penn A 1999 Making isovists syntatic Isovist integration analysis In de Holanda F Ed Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Space Syntax Vol 3 Universidade de Brasilia Brasilia Brazil WebmapAtHome Nick Sheep Dalton Department of Computing Open University Milton Keynes UK Abstract This note describes WebmapAthome a second generation axial only space syntax analysis tool that is freely available to the wider research urban and building design and analysis community This note covers some of the functionality provide with th
25. S Ed Pro ceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Space Syntax Istanbul Teknik Universitesi Istanbul Turner A Penn A 2002 Encoding natural movement as an agent based system an investigation into human pedestrian behaviour in the built environment Environment and Planning B Planning and Design 29 4 473 490 Turner A Penn A Hillier B 2005 An algorithmic definition of the axial map Environment and Planning B Planning and Design 32 3 425 444
26. Workspace showing the exploration of urban morphology using street and block metrics polygon or path with similar output to that of Omnivista Conroy Dalton and Dalton 2001 Real isovists This tool draws polygonal isovists given a layer of obstacles and a series of view points The isovist can be limited in distance range and a different ray tracing algorithm can be used for building or urban environments 3 4 Analysis Transform data Calculates new attribute columns transformed by different mathematical op erations like log square root squared a constant factor scales the values between 0 and 1 for ranking and normalises by the data set size Summary statistics Calculates summary statistics for the selected data sets and for the at tributes specified These statistics include like sum maximum minimum range mean median standard deviation or frequency but also correlation between pairs of attributes Explore statistics with JMP Exploring spatial statistical relationships with Confeego requires the use of the JMP statistical software but allows users to recreate the Axman experience of selecting an object on a map and then finding its associated data point in a scatterplot However users have more flexibility with Confeego in exploring spatial statistical relation ships as it allows users to select any object capable of being represented in MapInfo and finding it in any type of graph or plot capable of being generated in JMP see
27. ace data in certain urban areas for e g predicting movement Thus it seems very natural to try axial descriptions as a measurement of distance within geographic accessibility On the one hand this would mean a possibility to load geographical data for improved predictions of pedestrian movement within space syntax On the other hand and more interestingly this would mean an improved tool for accessibility analysis in general the linear rather than for example the metric accessibility to any asset or service we find in a city It is exactly such a tool we have developed as an extension to the GIS software Mapinfo and given the name the Place Syntax Too From the perspective of space syntax in place syntax we mean to put back attraction of W into the geometric accessibility formula equation 2 And from geographic accessibility formula equation 1 we want to put the axial line into d j where I is a representation of space and is a vector characterizing the preferences of individuals The representation of physical space may utilize many different variables For instance x77 is walk distance and y is bird s flight distance both by mode in meters t is travel A Stahle L Marcus A Karlstr m 37 Mapinfo lt lt Stat gt gt PST MB Sron i Load 4y Comm runPST EU PST App heere se Seeenereeee GetMessage ee cnet a N nag L EE T
28. an movement is blocked by safety fencing or more commonly in a building with an atrium where one can see a room on an upper floor but not directly walk there WebmapAthome introduces the concept of a visibility link a link like a super link described above where two spaces axial lines are connected by mutual visibility By using the make visibility link it is possible to create a second network of connections The compute visibility depth requires an empirical blend factor and from this creates a new type of integration that incorporates visibility and accessibility into the syntactical representation By introducing one way visibility links it is 10 WebmapAtHome also possible to represent signage and so provides a method to investigate the world of signage and way finding in a rigours syntactical setting 7 Observations WebmapAthome supports several layers familiar to CAD GIS and CAAD users In this case multiple layers can be used to hold gate observation data The inclusion of observation data has two primary aims Firstly axial maps can be exchanged and filed inclusive of their observations Secondly WebmapAthome provides a number of ways of automatically attributing observations to lines With Axman or a traditional CAD systems lines can be associated with data if the axial model is adjusted in light of on the ground information it becomes tedious to re attribute observation data to all axial line WebmapAthome provides mechan
29. and along the transportation between the positions The isovists can be divided into different sets that can be put in different layers All layers have an assigned color that is also seen on the isovists Each layer can be turned on and off When a layer is turned on its set of isovists automatically becomes a part of the graph Drawing interchange format DXF is the only drawing format importable The DXF format is a tagged data representation of all the information contained in an AutoCAD drawing file Tagged data means that each data element in the file is preceded by an integer number that is called a group code A group code s value indicates what type of data element follows Virtually all user specified information in a drawing file can be represented in DXF format Autodesk 2006 The program was built during a one month period and finished during the production of this paper There are some minor bugs regarding importing and exporting data and sometimes in the order of appearance of the layers and graphs however it works for academic use and will be available when this paper is published H Markhede P Miranda Carranza 5 Figure 3 Examples of integration graph and intervisibility graph using different positions The arrows in the left picture are centroids 3 Use and future development SPOT creates a possibility to examine the dynamics between the occupied space and the occupi able space as well as dynamics between o
30. arch is a special case of geometric accessibility Defining how to measure dij the distance transport cost or energy effort to move from i to 7 is then obviously a critical part of a accessibility measure and in a geometric accessibility measure the critical part The most common distance units used within accessibility research are topological steps in a network Euclidian metric distance travel time travel cost and monetary charges But it is exactly concerning such descriptions and measurements of distance one have encountered problems within accessibility research when moving from the comprehensive level of geography to the detailed level of urban settings what is dramatically absent are tools for developing accessibility measures at fine spatial scales which involve the geometry of urban structure in terms of streets and buildings in contrast to the measurement of accessibility at the geographic or thematic level Jiang and Claramunt 2000 We then also see that it is here the morphological descriptions developed within space syntax can prove useful and can contribute to accessibility research 2 Place syntax geographic accessibility with axial lines We now seem able to set up an almost symmetric problem On the one hand we have accessibility research and urban morphology in general where one lack of experiential descriptions of urban form On the other hand we have space syntax where one has problems integrating pl
31. ations from start to end The function can be made more generic by letting values of keywords used above be passed as arguments S Iida 31 Listing 3 Definition of my batch process2 defun my batch process2 input filename ax output filename seg output filename unlink filename ax radius depth ax radius choice seg weight seg radius depth seg radius choice seg rad mode open table mif t file input filename depthmap t read unlink data file unlink filename build topology remove ends t leave if longer than percent 25 calc sys2 weight traditional radius ax radius depth calc choice2 weight traditional radius ax radius choice calc sys2 weight seg weight radius seg radius depth rad mode seg rad mode calc choice2 weight seg weight radius seg radius choice rad mode seg rad mode write data mif t axial ax output filename segment seg output filename Then typing my batch process2 Barnsbury MIF Barnsbury_ax MIF Barnsbury_seg MIF Barnsbury_unlink txt 3 3 t simple 4 4 8 12 16 24 32 t route length produces the same result as my batch process but with more flexibility Even the existing functions can be overriden by re defining them this way For example d value can be re defined to calculate relative asymmetry of the corner vertex of a regular grid with n vertices see Kr ger 1989 for more information on this value which is given as 2 n n 2n 1 Gas n 1 n 2
32. ax model when calculating accessibility to population or floor area measured within axial lines post dicts pedestrian movement at the same high level as conventional axial line integration analysis in the case of S dermalm but considerably better in the case of H gdalen Compared to ordinary metric accessibility analysis by straight line or walking distance to population density place syntax is better in both cases Based on these initial findings and theoretical investigations we believe that the place syntax approach have great potential for detailed spatial analysis and accessibility research at large but also for practical urban planning and design 1 Introduction integrating space syntax and accessibility re search For a long time accessibility research of human behaviour was limited by the kind of data and analytical tools available For example there was no effective means for representing or dealing with the spatial complexity of a realistic urban environment neither did past studies incorporate data about a person s cognitive environment into the analytical framework Kwan 2000 In the past decade many steps have been taken to overcome these limitations for example instead of using the straight line distance between two locations the actual travel distance over the transportation network can be used Kwan 2000 Kwan et al 2003 state that still much remains and especially the understanding of our cognitive env
33. d it assumes that the user has access to MapInfo and is versed in such tasks as managing data tables executing queries or creating thematic maps On the other 16 Confeego hand it offers the users the ability to apply the spatial analysis and display features of a GIS to their projects There are several benefits in using a GIS as it integrates quantitative information with the geometric and geographic information By using a GIS the users can Import and export drawings and data in a wide variety of vector and raster file formats Combine information from multiple sources as it has a common geo referenced basis Draw and process complex geometries and topologies Analyse multiple layers of information both statistically and visually Perform spatial queries for exploration of topological relationships Use very large data sets for analysis of urban areas Convert geo referenced information for use in other platforms Define a flexible workflow combining creatively the different of tools If users are familiar with another GIS package or do not have the need to get started in GIS they might not feel attracted to use Confeego as there is a financial and time cost involved in learning MapInfo For those users who need a GIS in their space syntax research project Confeego is an appropriate option because it enhances a traditional GIS that does not work with the type of data or analysis required for space syntax research
34. d y of the centre of the isovist The Environment class has a field consisting of a rectangular polygon called perimeter which is taken as the initial polygonal area of the isovist an Area H Markhede P Miranda Carranza 3 Figure 1 Screenshot showing Spot windows with imported dxf line representation and two examples of positioning isovists object called isopol Then the constructor iterates through all the walls of the Environment object enviro and subtracts their shadow areas from its polygonal area The resulting Area object is the polygonal boundary of the isovist A number of calculations can also be performed in these isovists a particularly interesting one is the difference between the point from which it is calculated and the centroid of its area This shows a certain directionality of the space from where it is being perceived which seems to intuitively relate to a certain directionality feeling of that space More in depth studies on how this measure may relate to actual empirical data needs to be done but at this stage it suggests a possible interesting measure combined with other geometrical properties of isovists The interface is based on windows with four menus file edit view and help Under file is the open and store functions Under edit is the operative commands add and delete isovist delete all and the layer manager In the layer manager it is possible to create and delete a layer and assign col
35. developed by Space Syntax Limited and is available free for academic use It covers a range of tools that are useful to projects involving the classic space syntax analysis related to topological depth Hillier and Hanson 1984 Hillier 1996 and other tasks related to data collection statistical analysis and visualisation It also allows the integration of the results from other space syntax software tools Turner et al 2001 Turner 2004 Stahle et al 2005 Confeego is developed as an extension to MapInfo Professional GIS Geographic Information System for Microsoft Windows and requires an installed version of MapInfo 7 8 or above to run it It is currently used by Space Syntax Limited and its affiliate offices on consultancy Space Syntax Limited 2007 and research projects and is also used at UCL Space Lab and by other researchers around the world for academic research work In this paper we firstly explain the requirements and advantages of using a GIS platform We then introduce the task groups that Confeego provides support to and briefly describe the different tools that compose the suite We proceed to discuss how Confeego positions itself as a spatial configuration analysis work platform Finally we conclude highlighting the key benefits of Confeego and who will make the most of its use 2 The GIS Platform Confeego is a plug in for the MapInfo Professional GIS and this has several implications in the use of the software On one han
36. dings of the 4th International Symposium on Space Syntax UCL London UK pp 65 1 65 10 Dalton N S 2004 WebmapAtHome Ovinity Ltd London lida S 2001 Segmen UCL London McNeel 2007 Rhinoceros Barcelona O Sullivan D Turner A 2001 Visibility graphs and landscape visibility analysis International Journal of Geographical Information Systems 15 3 221 237 Penn A Dalton N 1994 The architecture of society Stochastic simulation of urban movement In Gilbert N Doran J Eds Simulating Societies The Computer Simulation of Social Phenomena UCL Press London pp 85 125 Peponis J Wineman J Bafna S Eds 2001 Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Space Syntax Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta Georgia Peponis J Wineman J Rashid M Kim S Bafna S 1998 Spatialist Georgia Tech Atlanta A Turner 51 Turner A 2000 Angular analysis a method for the quantification of space Working Paper 23 Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis UCL London Turner A 2001 Angular analysis In Peponis et al 2001 pp 30 1 30 11 Turner A 2007a The ingredients of an exosomatic cognitive map Isovists agents and axial lines In Holscher C Conroy Dalton R Turner A Eds Space Syntax and Spatial Cognition Universitat Bremen Bremen Germany Turner A 2007b To move through space Lines of vision and movement In Kubat A
37. e p112500_h gdslen_adt Distribute resu values in propestes table Carcel p 12500_hogdslen bygg 7 Next gt About Settings Close cerea Figure 2 Window 1 left and window 2 right in the Place Syntax Tool value to all Similar to that the output place data has to be determined whether they are to collect the mean max or min of the result values at the address points that is if you do not choose to display them on the address points In the Table Column Keys page you select the key columns that connect e g address points and plots 4 Empirical test set up The first thing we wanted to examine was if accessibility to population or built floor area measured metrically or with axial lines would correlate with observed pedestrian movement and if so how it would compare with the integration analysis The two urban areas already presented S dermalm and H gdalen were once again used They are delimited for maximum convexity and so that their size is 100 hectares each Axial maps with buffer zones were constructed for the two areas where the deformed grid of Sdermalm turned out to have a mean axial line length of 221 meters and consist of 131 axial lines while the interrupted grid of H gdalen had a mean axial line length of 100 meters and consisted of 435 axial lines Observations of pedestrian flows were conducted at 28 gates in S dermalm and 41 gates in H gdalen during two days one rainy and one sunny at five di
38. e package and discusses the rationale behind the choice of stand alone pure axial editor over integration with other applications 1 Introduction WebmapAthome began as a variation of the popular Webmap application Webmap Dalton 2002 was designed to be a one line axial mapping service like Hotmail or Gmail except for the creation and processing of axial maps While popular with students and interested par ties problems arose for those who wished to use Webmap while not connected to the Internet WebmapAtHome takes the proven computational engine and interface then builds a standalone application around it This application has been the basis for some computational research and as such has capabilities in excess of those found on the online version Versions of WebmapAthome including documentation can be downloaded from http www thepurehands org webmapathome User ID UAS Password syntax05 or http www skate bartlett ucl ac uk free account needed 2 Aims and objectives In many ways Webmap and WebmapAtHome were intended to be third generation axial mapping software moving beyond while being compatible with second generation axial mapping tools principally Axman Dalton 1988 WebmapAthome aimed at those who are novices both to space syntax and to urban and building computing in general As such the program extends the paradigms and functionality of programs like Axman The principle aim was to expand on the standalone nature of
39. e wider investigation of accessibility The Place Syntax tool like Markhede and Miranda s SPOT tool turns around how we conceive space syntax to the accessibility of the occupied space and its relationship to other spaces and other social factors contained within those spaces It is my belief that these reinventions of space syntax are imperative to its survival as a discipline and thus my own paper on Depthmap highlights the fact that we should continu ally revitalise our software through research whilst retaining the ability to perform the original space syntax measures in an easy and approachable manner for new and future researchers This workshop could not have taken place without the dedication of the Space Syntax Sympo sium organisers I would like to thank in particular the Symposium chair Prof Ay e Sema Kubat for her support the workshop assistants H Serdar Kaya and Mehmet Topcu and Yasemin Ince Giiney who organised printing these proceedings A T London May 2007 Spatial Positioning Tool SPOT Henrik Markhede and Pablo Miranda Carranza School of Architecture KTH Stockholm Sweden Abstract The Spatial Positioning tool SPOT is an isovist based spatial analysis software and is written in Java working as a stand alone program SPOT differs from regular Space syntax software as it can produce integration graphs and intervisibility graphs from a selection of positions The concept of the software originates from a series
40. eaks and hence great differences in pedestrian movements At H gdalen it seems that most trips are 6 axial lines or 600 meters That is most trips are probably generally shorter in Sdermalm 40 Place Syntax Tool dis _ i gt we AUSS A N Se Sna a Be Ne au eee ae CE Nir 6 2a SS eee Sim Weert Noto ee AY y ke ee Tet Mey Ca ag ee i IN o EAC AAaA ana A Aae ai pa K 4 gt Ja v PY ABs rA ap ak Jy d i Seagate SSR ON A a Maa w ha ys SY Q s teos V5 D 7 EEP 9 Ae op b i Pas DA A A Figure 4 Closest food store within axial lines Maps are comparable in terms of colour darker is shorter distance 5 3 Density configurations Comparisons of space syntax and place syntax make it possible to analyse the connections be tween spatial configuration and spatial distribution of densities For example the low mean depth in Sdermalm makes the correlations good for all radii greater than two using integration analysis The same is true for the place syntax analysis both when calculated for population and floor area though with small peaks at r 3 and r 8 The latter can of course lead to speculations People housing live and move locally and businesses move and attract globally This does seem likely to be the case but it has to be further investigated 6 Conclusion As with all analyses of accessibility and configuration there are complex of qualitative factors that are difficult to take into account as put forth by K
41. escription shown below 1 Open the axial map from Barnsbury MIF in MapInfo MIF Emulate Depthmap in as signing ID to the axial lines and segments 2 Read the text file Barnsbury_unlink txt to register unlinks 3 Build topology of the axial map and create a segment map Ignore any segment stubs that are shorter than 25 per cent of the original axial lines 4 Calculate configurational values of the axial map Use Radius 3 as the local measure 5 Calculate choice related measures of the axial map Calculate Radius n and 3 6 Calculate configurational values of the segment map using the angular analysis Use Radius 400 metric distance units as the local measure 7 Calculate choice related measures of the segment map using the angular analysis Calculate Radius 400 800 1200 1600 2400 3200 and n metric distance units 8 Save the results in MapInfo MIF Save the axial data as Barnsbury_ax MIF and the segment data as Barnsbury _seg MIF There are many more functions and options available The Segmen Reference Manual ex plains what they do and how to use them 3 Unlinks vlinks and exclusions One of the features of Segmen is that it takes a more comprehensive approach in defining unlinks and links which may not be derived geometrically To this end it distinguishes three different properties for both axial and segment analyses unlinks vlinks and exclusions Unlinks are intersections between lines which are adjacent to
42. estrictions 4 Programmability in Segmen Another feature of Segmen is that it is entirely programmable by the user so that the behaviour of the application can be controlled and modified or even a new measure can be introduced Since the application includes the full Common Lisp environment the user can define her own functions in Segmen and compile and run them immediately Unlike other scripting languages the compiled user functions in Segmen are native to the operating system and therefore run at the same speed as other Common Lisp functions For example you could define a new function called my batch process which executes the sequence of functions shown earlier in this paper automatically A generic Common Lisp special form defun can be used and the definition might look like Listing 2 Definition of my batch process defun my batch process open table mif t file Barnsbury MIF depthmap t read unlink data file Barnsbury_unlink txt build topology remove ends t leave if longer than percent 25 calc sys2 weight traditional radius 3 calc choice2 weight traditional radius 3 t calc sys2 weight simple radius 4 rad mode route length calc choice2 weight simple radius 4 8 12 16 24 32 t rad mode route length write data mif t axial Barnsbury_ax MIF segment Barnsbury_seg MIF Once the function has been defined simply typing my batch process will do the sequence of oper
43. fferent times during both days each lasting five minutes In this way each gate was observed 50 minutes in total Four types of accessibility analyses with ten different radii d were executed with PST accessibility to population measured with axial lines floor area with axial lines population with walk distance population with bird s flight distance The analyses where also tested with two different radii of the buffer area 700 meter and 2500 meter both birds flight distance The latter was based on the general rule of approximately 30 minutes walk distance around a study area often used within space syntax Correlations between the observed flow logarithmic and the accessibility analyses using PST as well as integration analyses using Webmap were then compared 5 Empirical test findings The main findings in our empirical test are basically of three types A Stahle L Marcus A Karlstr m 39 Figure 3 Map of accessibility to population r 3 S6dermalm area 0 60000 persons and r 6 for the H gdalen area 0 11000 persons Maps are not comparable in terms of colour darker is higher configurative population 5 1 Pedestrian movement prediction We can conclude that PST when calculating accessibility to population or floor area measured with axial lines predicts pedestrian movement at the same level as an integration analysis in the deformed grid of Sdermalm but more interestingly c
44. h a minimum angular turn through a system Turner 2000 This mirrors work by Conroy 2001 and Penn and Dalton 1994 on minimum angular routes through systems either of isovists or axial lines The ultimate analytic measure tends to an angular choice whether for visibility or axial systems However angular choice in axial systems is a difficult concept as where lines cross there are always two complementary angles one for the body of the line and one for its continuation Thus segmenting the lines was suggested Turner 2001 It was not until Segmen lida 2001 that the segmentation algorithm was implemented with UCL Depthmap 4 2004 following suit later The motivation for the UCL Depthmap implementation was to build a system faster than Segmen so that axial and road centre lines could be made commensurate following Dalton et al 2003 The system has now been tested for all of London as well as on Tiger line data for whole states in the USA with encouraging results 7 Data layers Originally UCL Depthmap only permitted calculation of measures for points lines or any other objects used for constructing a map However when agents that moved through the system were introduced it became obvious that counting agents crossing through space syntax style gates was imperative in order to compare values with real world observations Thus gate layers were introduced to UCL Depthmap which would record where agents moved A
45. ication for isovist field and path analysis In Peponis J Wineman J Bafna S Eds Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Space Syntax Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta Georgia pp 25 1 25 10 Hillier B 1996 Space is the Machine Cambridge University Press Cambridge UK Hillier B Hanson J 1984 The Social Logic of Space Cambridge University Press Cambridge UK Jiang B Claramunt C Klarqvist B 2000 An integration of space syntax into GIS for modelling urban spaces International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 2 161 171 Space Syntax Limited 2007 Croydon town centre Baseline analysis of urban structure layout and public spaces Croydon council local development framework LDF croydon metropolitan centre area action plan AAP Croydon Council Available online http www croydon gov uk planningandregeneration planningpolicy localdevelopmentframeworkldf croydonmetropolitancentreare Stahle A Marcus L Karlstr m A 2005 Place syntax Geographic accessibility with axial lines in GIS In van Nes A Ed Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Space Syntaz TU Delft Delft Netherlands pp 131 143 Turner A 2004 Depthmap 4 A researcher s handbook Tech rep Bartlett School of Graduate Studies UCL London Available online http www vr ucl ac uk depthmap depthmap4 pdf Turner A Doxa M O Sullivan D Penn A 200
46. ific program MapInfo MapInfo provides powerful mapping and visualisation of results so Gil et al s program merely needs to do the analytic work In addition Confeego offers interoperability with other systems such as JMP for statistics support meaning that a user who is familiar with the basic tools can easily access additional space syntax features Wineman et al address another shibboleth in their paper the fact that until now almost all space syntax software has not been open source Their tool Syntax2D aims to remedy this sit uation Indeed they argue it is imperative that programs are open source so that the algorithms they use are open to inspection If space syntax is to be thought of as scientific then making an experiment repeatable entails making the algorithm itself readable and repeatable Moreover public institutions such as universities should not be in the business of hiding information be hind compiled code where the source code which is readable by an expert has been optimised to run on a computer and can no longer be understood but instead making that information available to the public It is an argument easily made from a rich university in the USA but it is something that UK universities and perhaps others in the rest of the world need to relearn how to survive financially yet exist as a public institution Wineman et al also remind us of the need to cite software This gives credit to those who do not
47. in the use of axial lines and what part is due to what might be loosely called design intent 16 Summary Webmpathome is a general purpose urban and building spatial editing and analysis tool with a number of sophisticated features for the creation computation analysis and investigation of axial maps While this software has no segmental capabilities its self contained nature is ideal for new intermediate or infrequent use as part of research or as an architectural design tool WebmapAthome also bridges the cap between legacy software such as Axman and fourth generation space syntax methods References Bafna S 2003 Space syntax A brief introduction to its logic and analytical techniques Environment and Behavior 35 1 17 29 Dalton N 1988 Arman UCL London Dalton N 1994 JamesChoice UCL London Dalton N 2001 Fractional configurational analysis and a solution to the Manhattan problem In Peponis et al 2001 pp 26 1 26 13 Dalton N 2007 Configuration and neighborhood Is place measurable In H lscher C Conroy Dal ton R Turner A Eds Space Syntax and Spatial Cognition Universitat Bremen Bremen Germany Dalton N Peponis J Conroy Dalton R 2003 To tame a TIGER one has to know its nature Extending weighted angular integration analysis to the description of GIS road center line data for N S Dalton 13 large scale urban analysis In Hanson J Ed Proceedings
48. ious stages of a research project As such it can be used for more than traditional space syntax related research It might not be ideal for space syntax beginners with no GIS experience who need to focus on understanding the basic principles of space syntax But it gives support at various levels to complete spatial configuration analysis projects using space syntax methodologies in combination with other spatial analysis techniques Jiang et al 2000 Running within a GIS it becomes a work platform with no fixed workflow many of its tools being useful beyond what is described in the user s manual The more common tasks get automated with Confeego and the rest comes with each one s GIS experience J Gil C Stutz A Chiaradia 21 Furthermore Confeego should not be seen as a competitor to other space syntax software It can import results from other software and the user benefits from functionality for querying displaying and analysing multiple layers of information Finally Confeego is a reflection of the way Space Syntax Limited works in consultancy projects using MapInfo and other software programs Space Syntax Limited 2007 and is a principal means of achieving efficiency and freeing up time for more exploratory endeavours It is con tinuously under development to fix bugs and add new features or tools and is tested in an environment where the feedback loop between the users and the development team is very short 5 Conclusion Co
49. ironment is pointed out to be a crucial issue Accessibility is a widely used spatial analytic measure defined as the relative proximity of one place 7 to other places j In generalised terms the measure can be defined as Av gt gt f W dis 1 where W is some index of the attraction of j and dij is a measure of impedance typically the distance of travel time of moving from i to j Jiang and Claramunt 2000 From this 36 Place Syntax Tool definition it is easy to see how space syntax does not deal with the full concept of accessibility in that one rarely deal with W or any indexes of place attraction Another way of putting it is that accessibility research deals with places where place simply means a geographically specific space a location or a space with a specific content while space syntax only deals with spaces i e spaces or locations with no specified content and thereby no measurable attractivity This straightforward distinction between space and place can be said to be the basis of what Jiang and Claramunt 2000 distinguish as geographic and geometric accessibility Hence if geographic accessibility is the proximity of places then geometric accessibility is the proximity of spaces i e setting W 1 Geometric accessibility can be defined as Ai 7 Aig f d 2 From this Jiang and Claramunt 2000 have shown why space syntax from the point of view of accessibility rese
50. isms useful when dealing with both gate or moving gate observations and point observation such as break ins or building type 8 Data mining In line with Axman WebmapAthome has a number of interactive visualisations that can be used to help investigate data These include an enhanced table view that permits the creation of unlimited numbers of new data columns including the creation of random data columns for hy pothesis testing A new column calculator similar to the graphic user interface based calculators first seen in Statview is also present to permit the merging of multiple columns The scattergram interface is now presented simultaneously with the overall axial map Se lecting an item on the scattergram will selected the item in the main editor view This ability to interactively select and examine data has been enhanced in a number of ways Firstly all views understand the concept of a measure modifier For example if a measure colours from blue maximum to red minimum then selecting a negative modifier m will case the colour spectrum to become inverted red maximum to blue minimum Equally values can be the logarithm of the value to extenuate the low end value differences or the square of the value to extenuate the high end differences Overall fifteen measure modifiers are present that can alter the colour maps in many sophisticated ways This use of measure modifiers is hypothesised to be more valuable than alternative sim
51. ith any of 30 Segmen the weighting modes that have certain implications on the physical arrangement of origins and destinations so the user needs to provide one s when defining a vlink Unlike other structural elements each vlink can hold unspecified number of different weights and you can even give the weight a name which is not one of the pre defined weight names A non pre defined weight name such as experimenti would work as a group name and it can be specified when depth and or choice related measures are calculated Exclusions mark the axial lines segments which are not to be involved in the process of calculating any configurational measures The excluded axial lines segments will not be an origin or destination nor will they be part of any shortest path found in the system When an axial exclusion is registered all the segments that originally belong to that axial line are also excluded However the axial exclusion does not invoke rebuilding the topology of the segment map The exclusions have been designed not to alter the topology of the entire maps so the segments which have been divided by the excluded line remain divided An example of using both exclusions and unlinks might be to implement road traffic man agement on a segment map Setting one way roads or banned sections can be done by excluding segments in one both direction s and making segment unlinks between neighbouring segments can be regarded as imposing turn r
52. kstr m Shttp www mapinfo com See also statistics on Stockholm see http www stockholm se usk Go to In English Data Guide The observations in S dermalm roughly corresponded with earlier studies by Marcus 2000 8Population is here calculated as the sum of population in housing and work places IGIS statistics on floor area night and day population are from 2003 and come from the Stockholm Office of Research and Statistics http www stockholm se usk Geodata of address points and plot regions comes from the Stockholm City Planning Office 10i e a walking speed of 5km h References Batty M 2003 A new theory of space syntax Working Paper 75 Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis UCL London Jiang B Claramunt C 2000 An integration of space syntax into GIS New perspectives for urban morphology Transactions in GIS 6 295 307 Kwan M P 2000 Analysis of human spatial behavior in a GIS environment Recent developments and future prospects Journal of Geographical Systems 2 85 90 Kwan M P Murray A T O Kelly M E Tiefelsdorf M 2003 Recent advances in accessibility research Representation methodology and applications Journal of Geographical Systems 5 129 138 Marcus L 2000 Architectural knowledge and urban form The functional performance of architectural urbanity Ph D thesis KTH School of Architecture Stockholm Sweden Miller H J 2000 Geographic representati
53. lection point for researchers unifying different methods of analysis within a single application With the software and source code freely available Syntax2D is an opportunity for the space syntax community to share and build upon their work across a common framework 1 Overview of features Our objective of the first version of Syntax2D is to lay the framework for future development At this early stage we are more interested in incorporating existing measures and establishing a workable interface between them than in pushing the limits with new features Therefore on the surface it would seem there is not much to distinguish Syntax2D from other recent spatial analysis programs It meets the basic needs of space syntax research with isovists axial maps and grid VGA analysis Users can import dxf files and export data to csv The interface features mouse pan and zoom and visualization layers that can be toggled on and off Although it may not yet have the depth of features of existing programs this version is fully capable Students at the University are currently using Syntax2D for their research One of our original contributions is the inclusion of new path based measures While the com puter modeling techniques of spatial characteristics are being continuously refined and improved the representation and analysis of how people move are still carried out using manual methods Syntax2D quantifies traces of people paths so that these can
54. lines do not connect links e g address points which link plots to closest axial line The second window is for selecting type of analysis and consists of five pages In the Calcula tion type setting page you can choose to calculate from all places or just from a single place In the Criteria settings page the column for desirable place data is selected Here you can choose multiple columns Data can also be normalized and given a relative weight In the Result set tings page you choose how results are displayed in a table or on a coloured map in MapInfo Here there is also a critical section where you on the one hand decide how data on input place data are distributed to the address points divided with the amount of address points or the full 38 Place Syntax Tool i ESET E zaz Piease select the tables for the analysis Input ponts source pants in analysis Calculation settings Calculation type settings Criteria settings Result settings Table Column Keys F7 Ottan input trom properties table p Distance measurement Calculation pu2500_h gdsien brag z Massie ie Find minimum distance Address points table Use function p112500_h gdslen_adi x Current function As al ines Threshold 1 ox2500_hagdaken owt tums F Unink table Tolerance Im oe out2500_hogdalen_urlirk T 20 Edit Function Outpt data points Rarget points in analysis Address points tabl
55. lues The multiple measures are expanded by two new radius like features Vicinity Dalton 2005 and Decay Vicinity tries to eliminate the problems of angular relativisation by using only the closest V number of axial lines Decay also attempts to eliminate the mathematical process of relativisation by including all lines but reducing the importance of a lines contribution dependant upon the geodetic distance In practice both Decay and Vicinity are almost but not completely identical to Radius based integration The differences are likely to be a rich source of further research 12 Choice Choice Bafna 2003 was of long standing theoretical interest and with the growth in com puting power has again emerged as an area of research Hillier and Iida 2005 Turner 2005 WebmapAtHome now repackages the old external program called JamesChoice Dalton 1994 that computes the syntactical definition of axial choice rather than the similar sociological algo rithms 13 Parallel hyper speed processing Many modern computers including some laptops have multiple cores WebmapAthome takes advantage of this by providing a new multithreaded version of the standard algorithms By carefully crafting a new set of algorithms WebmapAthome can halve the computation time by taking full advantage of both processors 12 WebmapAtHome 14 Neighbourhood point synergy point intelligibility One of the most important new algorithms embodied in WebmapAthome is
56. ly through Space Syntax Limited Turner A 2001 Depthmap a program to perform visibility graph analysis In Proceedings of the Third International Space Syntax Symposium Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta GA pp 31 1 31 9 Xanalys Corporation 2001 LispWorks Version 4 2 LispWorks Ltd Cambridge UK Place Syntax Tool GIS Software for Analysing Geographic Accessibility with Axial Lines Alexander Stahle Lars Marcus and Anders Karlstro6m t School of Architecture KTH Stockholm Sweden t Department of Infrastructure KTH Stockholm Sweden Abstract The Place Syntax Tool PST is a plugin application for the desktop software MapInfo written in MapBasic and C C The plugin was developed since conventional accessibility research and space syntax research face an almost symmetrical problem when it comes to analysing and pre dicting urban pedestrian movement In this paper we explore the possibilities to combine the space syntax description of the cognitive environment i e topological axial line distance with conventional descriptions of attraction into a combined accessibility analysis model that we call place syntax The model is tested with a new GIS tool for MapInfo called the Place Syntax Tool Pedestrian movement was observed in two urban areas in Stockholm the premodernist grid morphol ogy S dermalm and the modernist tree like morphology H gdalen We can conclude that the place synt
57. n UK Abstract Here I introduce Segmen an experimental application I have developed for computing various space syntax measures Notable about its features are that it has an extended set of axial and segment unlinks and vlinks and that it can be completely programmable 1 Introduction Segmen is an experimental application environment which essentially does graph computation for axial segment maps in order to obtain various configurational measures It has been written entirely in Common Lisp and can be compiled and run on any platform that has a Common Lisp implementation For the convenience of the user the author currently provides the compiled images of the program on both Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows On Mac OS X Gary Byers OpenMCL version 1 1 Alpha Byers 2001 has been used to compile and generate the image and the user needs to set up OpenMCL environment in order to run Segmen On Windows Segmen is a stand alone application and has been compiled using Xanalys LispWorks version 4 2 Xanalys Corporation 2001 Both platforms provide only a basic user interface figures 1 and 2 In fact when you launch Segmen it simply opens a command line interface window of the Common Lisp programming environment similar to the Unix shell on Mac OS X or Command Prompt window on Windows and is then ready to take Common Lisp functions from the user In addition to the generic Common Lisp functions Segmen defines its own set of func
58. n open space then their movement patterns tend to be drawn between the lines joining those occluding edges Since the occluding edges in an environment are simply the concave corners within it the agents start to embody the axial system with their movement The mathematical basis of this embodiment is an eigenvector produced for the system which is essentially a graph measure that assigns values to all the points in the visibility graph The fact that it is possible to create an analytic measure such as this to explain the movement of agents is explored in more detail in Turner 2007b Whereas the eigenvector for occlusion agents represents the all line axial map the eigenvector for the original UCL Depthmap agents is a related to the supra all line map all possible lines between pairs of intervisible points in a set of covering isovists which I have called through vision see Turner 2007b This realisation that analytic measures of axial and visibility graphs can be tied to agent based analysis brings together axial point and agent analysis into a single body of research with further relationships to be discovered and formalised 6 Segment analysis Segment analysis is also related to the other measures to an extent in that it runs through from angular measures of all forms of graphs From UCL Depthmap s perspective this was driven by angular analysis of visibility systems and the relationship to an agent that guides itself throug
59. n analyzing spaces occupied by a specific organization There are several basic specifications for building the software the possibility to create an uneven distribution of isovists layer systems with color coding and calculation of integration measures During the process new functions have been developed and other concepts of mea sures were added Building the software has in itself been an investigation of how to create representations of social and spatial relations In addition we will use SPOT as a platform for further investigations of socio spatial representations The software was produced during a one month period and work as a prototype for academic use only To produce graphs with SPOT we use isovists to represent space because the phenomena studied here are related to visibility An isovist having its origins in analysis of sightlines is an attempt to represent what can be seen from one position or area in space 360 degree orientation as represented by a two dimensional slice of visibility Benedikt 1979 In the SPOT graph is both the origin of the isovist as well as the field part of the analysis both together and on their own The isovist on its own can also be interpreted in different ways position internalized to a seeing subject what is seen from one position and externalized and interpreted as a field seen from the origin of the isovist This double relationship within the isovist is about who or what is exposed and what
60. n in both researchers and practitioner s analysis By multiplying the local measure into the global measure one can create graphs handling spatial phenomena originating from different scales This way of measuring has been successfully used when analyzing pedestrian movement in offices Grajewski 1993 and movement in cities Spacescape 2007 In this cases were axial line maps used for correlations Such measure could be automatically generated in SPOT In addition it would be useful to develop a visibility network node graph to calculate both integration measures and use fixed metric measures which have succecfully been used in other programs St hle et al 2005 We could then investigate small differences in for example offices When analyzing face to face interactions one could consider behavior related to the range of 6 SPOT human performance for example such as Hall s 1966 social distances The possibility to move isovists already exists in SPOT This feature gives a possibility to experiment in real time to test different solutions We aim to develop the possibility to edit the line drawing in real time This feature would have a pedagogic value and be useful for the practitioner when evaluating small changes in their design The tool would be able to design both the occupied and the occupiable at the same time or designing fields directly as Benedikt puts it in his classic paper 1979 References Autodesk 2006 DXF
61. ne or more origins based on an axial network or a convex spaces system Street metrics Based on an axial map it calculates line direction length and connectivity and a user interface allows previewing the direction profile of the system and explore different grid patterns according to a predominant direction figure 3 Block metrics This tool derives blocks from an axial map to study urban morphology and urban grain It calculates block size plus a series of other block shape metrics and generates maps that display the different block patterns in the system figure 3 VGA isovists Given a pre calculated grid of VGA tiles and the connections graph from UCL Depthmap it generates a series of isovists for analysis The isovist origin can be a point J Gil C Stutz A Chiaradia 19 BINS SES Ale ei sila wled al flock Size Perimeter Length m aere erse ceane a apari sera 266208 aae eene aroa Toana 232662 16 Se2 am sss 2552 aos eaa 252519 Taaaas orsre 201324 zoarras roon zan PERK ABS UR BEER EEE asor ases 102781 wean esate 245004 anom rosa zase Se Orein Totchat Ue ot ed we ese 1 Pont ee Fs oumas 5 anso oases 356303 I 2 Cernere D mT ime E J 735402 20733 321899 wa ET res ons 332 m sar nens s0989 Nun o Tres per ange F 1571289 540 188 197748 Figure 3
62. nfeego is a suite of tools for spatial configuration analysis and that supports tasks at various stages of a research project These include data translation data collection map processing data analysis and data visualisation It has been designed to run integrated within the MapInfo GIS platform for Microsoft Windows It might not be the ideal tool for space syntax beginners with no GIS experience who might prefer a simpler standalone and cross platform application Nor for those who from the nature of their research do not require any of the benefits of a GIS platform For those who require the analysis of large complex systems combining a multitude of data sources and analysis types Confeego provides an adequate work platform and offers the classic space syntax tools plus supports tasks that go beyond traditional space syntax related research Each user can be creative in how the Confeego tools are applied within the GIS to address the research problems in hand If users are already using MapInfo for parts of their research and other space syntax soft ware then Confeego can be integrated into the workflow as it complements existing software by importing the results for further spatial statistical analysis Confeego was developed for consultancy and research projects at Space Syntax Limited and is used daily and reviewed to ensure efficiency in routine tasks moving the focus onto understanding and exploring the effects of spatial configuration in
63. not re release programs containing Syntax2D code in the form of commercial software Papers published using software derived from any Syntax2D code must cite the authors of the original code With the introduction of the software the University will be launching a website where users can discuss their needs and coordinate their own development efforts This site will host the full archive of all future revisions of Syntax2D as well as supplemental documentation and tutorials In time we hope that users will contribute to the website both as members of an active learning community and as co developers of the software Development of the software will follow a model similar to that of Linux whereby user submitted suggestions and code are vetted by a committee and then incorporated into the offi cial version of the software at regular intervals In this manner we hope to control the quality and usability of the software while retaining community involvement in its evolution 3 Conclusion If software is a vital component of space syntax research then its politics are as important as its features Proprietary academic software is a contradiction transparency is essential if we are to engage in peer review and build upon each other s work We believe that open source which both protects and encourages contributions is the best policy Therefore we offer Syntax2D an open source platform for space syntax analysis as the first step in thi
64. nto an Environment class which all isovist objects share and can interrogate The most important component of the program is the Isovist class which uses the operations available through the java geom Area class part of the standard Java libraries to manipulate 2D polygons The calculation of an isovist is done quite simply by generating an initial rectangular polygon that covers the total area of the specified drawing and by subtracting the polygons of the shadow areas produced by the position of the isovist Because of the speed of these calculations isovists can be added deleted moved in real time or organised in layers which can be turned on or off Below is shown a part of the code regarding the process of calculation Isovist Environment enviro float cx float cy this enviro enviro vpt new Point2D Float cx cy isopol new Area enviro perimeter rangex enviro perimeter width rangey enviro perimeter height Maxrange rangex gt rangey rangex rangey int nw enviro walls size for int i 0 i lt nw i Area shadow calcShadow enviro walls elementAt i isopol subtract shadow The code snippet defines the constructor method of the Isovist class showing the process of calculation The constructor takes 3 arguments an object of type Environment which is the class that stores the description of the 2d geometry from which to calculate the isovists and the x an
65. o look to UCL Depthmap for exploratory research or simply to edit an axial map quickly it has become clear that creating and editing trial plans in addition to maps is an essential feature for the space syntax community As with other A Turner 45 functionality UCL Depthmap will continue to follow what I feel is best practice in other systems so lines are drawn as with many CAD package by clicking once to start and once to end the line While the line is edited or at any other time the user can zoom with the mouse scroll wheel and pan by clicking and holding the right mouse button a feature taken from Rhino McNeel 2007 It is hoped that the addition of usability functions such as this as well as the development of new analysis and new map generation algorithms will continue to make UCL Depthmap a tool of choice for the space syntax researcher and practitioner 2 Isovist analysis It is important to remember that visibility graph analysis despite the technical name is really the analysis of the visual relationships of potentially humanly occupied points in space to each other There is a lot that remains unsaid about the set of analyses available of these points in addition to traditional measures there are also metric and angular measures answering questions such as how much physical distance there between one point and any other and how much do you have to turn to get from one isovist to any other see also the section on segment
66. oduce vector images for both print and the internet in SVG and EPS formats Exchange with pro grams like Depthmap Turner 2001 and GIS is encouraged via the ablity to export unlinks in a number of formats WebmapAthome s new AXIL Dalton 2003 format is both well documented and text based permitting a number of translators to be written to new applications 5 Editing Combined with the ability to import both JPEG and GIF image formats WebmapAthome operates in a familiar way to Axman users Lines can be drawn moved edited and deleted For design based project this creates an unmatched fluidity of process WebmapAthome replaces the use of the traditional bridge typically used to link separate floors with a new mechanism known as a super link a super link is a form of inverse unlink This selection of two separate and non connecting axial lines enables the superlink menu which allows the user to glue the lines together via a guide line Superlinks automatically update when moving entire floors For very large axial maps an overview or navigational panel is permanently visible permitting the user to assess their location in the larger area when zoomed in 6 Visibility links and visibility depth accessibility and signage in buildings One common problem with most axial mapping is the situation where there is an ambiguity between visible accessibility and physical accessibility For example a busy traffic junction where pedestri
67. of field studies on building interiors highly influenced by organizations and social groups We have developed SPOT as a prototype Basic SPOT operations use selections of positions and creations of isovist sets The sets are color coded and layered the layers can be activated and visible by being turned on or off At this point there are two graphs produced in SPOT the isovist overlap graph that shows intervisibility between overlapping isovist fields and the network integration analysis built on visibility relations The program aims to be used as a fast and interactive sketch tool as well as a precise analysis tool Data images and diagrams can be exported for use in conjunction with other CAD or illustration programs The first stage of development is to have a functioning prototype with the implementation of all the basic algorithms and a minimal basic functionality in respect to user interaction 1 Introduction Regular space syntax tools such as Depthmap create graphs of the occupiable space Turner 2004 however the Spatial Positioning Tool SPOT creates graphs of the occupied Therefore SPOT is not strictly a tool for spatial analysis it analyzes how organizational entities occupy space in relation to each other The main difference from the regular space syntax graph is that SPOT produces graphs of the distribution in space where the former is an analysis of the distribution of space Turner and Penn 1999 This shift is relevant whe
68. of the 4th International Symposium on Space Syntax UCL London UK pp 65 1 65 10 Dalton N S 2002 Webmap Ovinity Ltd London Dalton N S 2005 New measures for local fractional angular integration Or towards general relativi sation in space syntax In van Nes 2005 pp 103 115 Dalton N S C 2003 The WebmapAtHome AXIL Format Available online http www thepurehands org AXILFormat html de Nooy W A M V B 2005 Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek Cambridge University Press Cambridge Hillier B Hanson J 1984 The Social Logic of Space Cambridge University Press Cambridge UK Hillier B Iida S 2005 Network effects and psychological effects A theory of urban movement In van Nes 2005 pp 553 564 Koutsofios E North S C 1993 Drawing graphs with dot AT amp T Bell Laboratories Murray Hill NJ Peponis J Wineman J Bafna S Eds 2001 Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Space Syntax Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta Georgia SAS Institute 1992 StatView Cary NC Turner A 2001 Depthmap a program to perform visibility graph analysis In Peponis et al 2001 pp 31 1 31 9 Turner A 2005 Could a road centre line be an axial line in disguise In van Nes 2005 pp 145 159 van Nes A Ed 2005 Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Space Syntax TU Delft Delft Netherlands 14
69. oject Nick Dalton UCL for his products Axman Dalton 1988 and Ovation Dalton 2001 which inspired the author to develop the software Alasdair Turner UCL for his amazing programming effort for Depthmap Turner 2000 2001 which kindly incorporates many of the measures and models that have been gradually developed through this program Professor Yasushi Asami University of Tokyo and Professor Ay e Sema Kubat ITU for having given to the author the first opportunity to apply segment computation to the real project my colleagues at UCL and Space Syntax Limited and Kerstin Sailer TU Dresden UCL for kindly trying and testing the software Notes 1 Available from the author or online Curently pre defined weight names are traditional simple vector constant constant2 and metric References Byers G 2001 OpenMCL Version 1 1 Alpha Clozure Associates Somerville MA Available online http openmcl clozure com Dalton N 1988 Arman Version 3 UCL London electronically available through Space Syntax Lim ited Dalton N 2001 Ovation Version 1 6 3 Ovinity Ltd London electronically available through Space Syntax Limited 34 Segmen Kr ger M J T 1989 On node and axial maps distance measures and related topics paper for the European Conference on the Representation and Management of Urban Change Cambridge 28 29 September 1989 Turner A 2000 Depthmap Version 7 UCL London available electronical
70. on in spatial analysis Journal of Geographical Systems 2 55 60 42 Place Syntax Tool UCL Depthmap 7 From Isovist Analysis to Generic Spatial Network Analysis Alasdair Turner Bartlett School of Graduate Studies UCL London UK Abstract This short paper discusses some of the new functions available in UCL Depthmap 7 UCL Depthmap s original purpose was to perform integration analysis of isovists just as the integration of axial lines could be calculated It has now developed in a number of different directions so it has become closer to a traditional GIS system with analysis functions for graphs built in In doing so it has acquired features available in other space syntax software including data layers for gate counts and building information scattergrams and derived columns as well as new measures and analysis of space including agent based tools axial map generation and angular segment analysis 1 Introduction UCL Depthmap was conceived in the course of doing research and was designed with the aim of further research It was created to perform isovist integration analysis that is to apply the same analysis to isovists Benedikt 1979 that had been previously applied to axial lines and convex spaces through Axman Dalton 1988a and Pesh Dalton 1990 All these three types of analysis are actually very similar first a map is created of the spatial units be they isovists lines or polygons then a spatial network
71. one id list remove duplicates reduce append id list key lambda v axline neighbors find axline id v append id list done id list current depth 1 total depth acc length id list current depth 333 my bfs scans all axial lines from the line ID id and returns 333 its total depth defun my bfs id my bfs sub axline neighbors find axline id id list id 1 0 333 my calc sys computes total depth and registers the value in 333 the data structure for the axial lines whose ID are between 333 Start and end Note that the total depth is stored in the slot 333 of the structure in the form of an array defun my calc sys start end let start id get id by userid ax start end id get id by userid ax end S Tida 33 counter 0 do id start id id 1 axline find axline id id find axline id id or null axline gt id end id counter incf counter setf axline totaldepth axline vector my bfs id when zerop mod counter 10 print counter end verbatim Typing my calc sys 1 100 is roughly equivalent to running calc sys2 weight traditional radius t start 1 end 100 although it runs slower and calculates only total depth 5 Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the following people Professor Bill Hillier and Professor Alan Penn UCL for their kind and continuous support and advice for the author s pr
72. oned WebmapAthome computes all the standard measures Hillier and Hanson 1984 integration integration 3 connectivity control in a way for good or evil that is directly compatible with Axman The constituent values total depth RRA RRA3 are computed to aide those keen to understand the process of normalisation A number of component measures are also present such as k 2 and k 3 that is the number of axial lines at precisely this distance from the appropriate starting line 10 Angular Measures WebmapAthome also includes the ability to compute the axial angular integration Dalton et al 2003 To clarify this is a separate measure from segmental angular depth Hillier and lida 2005 Turner 2005 WebmapAthome is purely an axial and not segmental computational package so it is possible to compute a fractional angular depth based on the angle of intersection of axial lines as mentioned in Dalton 2001 This method also seems to have an improvement in fit with reality but does not abandon the gains with axial methodology such as connectivity and hence intelligibility To help illuminate the issue a single line or group of lines can be selected and then coloured by the depth from the origin by both angle and step depth 11 Multiple measures A number of new experimental measures are presented in the application This includes multi radii this computes all the values of integration for a range 3 10 for example of radius va
73. onsiderably better than integration analysis in the interrupted grid of Hgdalen The apparent reason is that PST captures the heterogeneous distribution of population densities in and around Hgdalen Even though the correlations are lower in Hgdalen all over the line than in Sdermalm the R2 value 0 4417 for PST axial pop radius 6 must be considered fair The variations in correlation using the different measurements are however interesting in themselves and probably tell us something fundamental about the planning paradigms used in the two areas Furthermore since calculations with PST are based on absolute numbers of population a coef ficient can be derived by dividing the observed movement values with the place syntax value This movement production coefficient can then be used to predict movement in places not observed in absolute numbers not only relatively as in the integration analysis Taking the measures with the best correlations the axial population configuration r3 coefficient for Sdermalm is 0 013 and the axial population configuration r6 coefficient for Hgdalen is 0 026 5 2 Distance measures We can conclude and confirm that the axial line is superior to any metric distance measure walk or bird s distance especially in the deformed grid of S dermalm where most trips are likely 3 axial line steps When comparing the two areas in terms of different radii it is very clear that they have different correlation p
74. ot observation data according to user defined time periods pedestrian categories and activity Traces Provides a toolbar for entering pedestrian following traces observation data according to user defined time periods and categories Land use Tool for entering land use survey data and building information which can then be displayed according to three different standards figure 1 Frontages and fences Tool for drawing the building frontages and fences and define their level of transparency facing the public space Entrances Tool for recoding entrance surveys characterising the interface between the buildings and the public space Infrastructure Tool that facilitates the recording of a large variety of public realm infrastruc ture street furniture pavement types crossings and surveillance equipment This type of surveys are particularly relevant for environmental impact assessment studies 18 Confeego KRASE jala cl wea Esl She Ee evel Connectivity Int_R3 fine Rn im_Rraso LES 2 7105898 O686057 _O83657 pcal_sorted by In RN Lose oser mise assets ogra 1208 1074101161 22 2202 067217 EA 0367101074 60 1 06698 0 676054 0 88364 De geet ay iment _osveaso ose aai _oavaase _o7eaate 0639100728 78 msn oe7sase o7asate 0562100539 40 msn os76838 O75340 Dzar oeenn sree q Ls E
75. ours to the set of isovists within the layer Layers can also be turned on and off Under the view menu it is possible to choose which information to view in the work area Graph features can be turned on and off Under the help menu is this paper to be found When creating the graphs in SPOT one can move around delete or add positions and see the graphs change in real time The main function of the program is to import line drawings and position isovists within the line drawing The isovists are positioned by using the pointer and clicking within the drawing area When doing this is an isovist field expanded limited by the imported line drawing and the drawing area box which gives an outer limit for the isovists The application of several isovists with different positions but with overlapping fields gives rise to a differentiation in colour among the overlaps due to the gamma transparency There are two kinds of graphs produced in this version of SPOT Intervisibility which is an overlapping isovist fields graph and network graph showing relative asymmetry RA integration The graph of overlapping isovist fields is very crude and is not yet possible to calculate with any space syntax integration measure The gamma structure of the isovist field creates a visual effect giving the range of the graph The range depends on the amount of layered isovists where there are many overlapping isovist the graph becomes darker and where its fever it becomes ligh
76. ple two point S curve for a number of reasons Firstly the modifier is comparative if two maps have the same modifier applied then the colours are comparative S curve based systems must have exactly the same point values used Secondly and more importantly the modifiers can be used in all the data mining components such as the scattergram histogram Hence it is possible to see both the axial colour scheme and the scattergram modified to precisely the same degree enchaning visual comprehension Also available in the data mining panel are a new histogram showing the distribution of values legend a new intelligibly surface and a finger print of the connectivity This is a plot of the table of connectivities degrees between differing axial lines For example if two lines have a connectivity of three connect to lines of connectivity five then a value of two will appear between row three and column five Another significant addition is the generalised use of enable disable inspired by Statview SAS Institute 1992 This permits an area to be investigated by the temporary removal of axial lines from the values being investigated For example a large axial area may be mapped but the surrounding buffer area might be disabled to permit in the differences within the core site to be stronger Alternatively it is possible to exclude all singly connected axial lines within a complete map N S Dalton 11 9 Measures As menti
77. rganizational relations and spatial relations The graphs made in SPOT can be correlated to data sets and show user patterns related to these dynamics Future research at SAD Spatial Analysis and Design aims to evaluate SPOT through using data sets from earlier studies of office buildings made within our research group So far we only looked into open plan offices and department stores The testing of different kinds of office layouts is crucial to prove the usefulness of the software Because this version of SPOT is an evaluation prototype it has many bugs and lacks graphs and features that could make it even more useful The development of SPOT will primarily handle these bugs as well as develop new graphs and measures There are mainly three features to focus on to implement integration measures to the isovist field graph to implement fixed metric distance to the visibility integration network graph and to make the line drawing editable in a real time sketching process To implement integration measure to the isovist field graph would make it possible to create simplified VGA graphs This would make it possible to compare different sub sets of distribution in space with the super set of the total distributed space This would open up a process of match ing the occupiabel to the occupied and use the layer manager for testing different combinations and solutions A similar but different operation is local in global measure a measure that is commo
78. s direction We hope that other programs and researchers will join us in supporting this effort Notes l Axial maps are somewhat limited in this version Once we have them optimized we will have the full suite of axial tools in the next version 26 Syntax2D 2Currently modifications to the source code require Microsoft Visual Studio which is not freely available The decision to use Microsoft libraries was made to speed development time of the first version We hope to eliminate this dependency in the future References Benedikt M L 1979 To take hold of space Isovists and isovist fields Environment and Planning B Planning and Design 6 1 47 65 Conroy Dalton R Dalton N 2001 Omnivista An application for isovist field and path analysis In Peponis et al 2001 pp 25 1 25 10 Peponis J Wineman J Bafna S Eds 2001 Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Space Syntax Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta Georgia Turner A 2001 Depthmap a program to perform visibility graph analysis In Peponis et al 2001 pp 31 1 31 9 Turner A Doxa M O Sullivan D Penn A 2001 From isovists to visibility graphs a methodology for the analysis of architectural space Environment and Planning B Planning and Design 28 1 103 121 Segmen A Programmable Application Environment for Processing Axial Maps Shinichi lida Bartlett School of Graduate Studies UCL Londo
79. s no way to save your selection for future use although this is in the pipeline 10 Plugins Derived columns allow an intermediate level user a good amount of freedom to play with the measures created by UCL Depthmap but they do not allow the user to create their own graph measures from scratch Thus to allow more sophisticated users to add much more and also allow UCL Depthmap developers such as myself to add measures without having to create an entire new version of UCL Depthmap there is a DLL interface to UCL Depthmap This interface allows users who program with Visual Basic C or Java to create compatible plugin applications for UCL Depthmap Plugins have already proved useful to quickly add metric and topological analysis of segment maps in addition to the standard angular measures within UCL Depthmap and it is hoped that other users will be able to add and share more plugins in the future 11 The future The main missing element from the UCL Depthmap 7 is convex space analysis UCL Depthmap has recently undergone a revamp of the underlying representation that it uses so that all types of map point axial polygon have the same stucture This means that the facility to analyse graphs of polygons is already present although the ability to join those polygons together is still required As polygons can be loaded from either DXF or from MapInfo or indeed drawn by the user themselves and since all geometry is graphable it jus
80. t first these were collections of points grouped into a single gate but as UCL Depthmap has progressed this has transferred into first allowing lines and now arbitrary geometry and data to be loaded into a number of data layers Data layers act like any point line or polygon map but without any graph information Thus geometric and numerical data can be imported into them from programs such as MapInfo or simply as text files while data from graph layers can be pushed to the data layer producing a summary of attribute values for any overlapping geometry from the graph layer in the data layer However there remains the perennial problem of tying data 48 UCL Depthmap Rucu vepthmap aram zioz E Point Graphs SS CETE Point M ir ir i ee ee Con ity Das ie E gt v Connectivity Degree z amp Ref Number 10897 1 Agent Counts 37037 amp e Connectivity Degn 25222 6 Point First Moment 24597 39 Point Second Mor 10631 1B Drawing Layers 7943 21 8 tate_base_ruth 1692 1 52921e 006 1 11351e 006 1 54381e 006 29632 2 1 18401e 006 Replace values for Agent Counts Formula Existing value Connectivity Degree T 47 In valuef Agent Counts Connectivity Degree Point First Moment Point Second Moment lt lt Use attribute T Apply formula to selected objects only i tees 4 aE TICS 447973 13529 8 515669 a J 6314 51 125205 S M 13357 6 476072 oe 25620 6 945313
81. t least programs to measure relationships between occupiable space whatever form that may take The first paper Markhede and Miranda s SPOT tool focuses on just that phrase occupiable space They argue that space syntax tools have largely ignored the special status of occupied space by giving precedence to all to all measures of space such as integration and so they have implemented a tool to examine the relationships between occupied spaces Markhede and Miranda s paper offers a new insight into how we approach space syntax They are followed by a stalwart of space syntax tool creators Dalton Dalton presents a standard syntax tool WebmapAtHome and his argument here is not focused on new ways to approach space syntax although WebmapAtHome has new measures backed up by recent research by Dalton but rather what the tool itself should be Dalton s conviction is that a tool should be self contained allowing the user to perform all the necessary operations from drawing a system of axial lines through analysing them to statistical analysis of them within a single package Furthermore Dalton s program is cross platform that is it works on Macs as well as PCs Thus the user is not tied to any specific drawing or statistics package nor indeed any particular computer Gil et al present the opposite approach an industry solution to the space syntax tool Confeego s very advantages are in the fact that it is locked into a spec
82. t remains to add a simple user interface to allow space syntax practitioners to relate one convex space to another Further off are more features to allow the user to get right at the heart of the algorithms used and adapt and modify them for future use For example the ability to write your own reduction algorithm to obtain a set of axial lines This requires an update to the plugin interface so that it allows modification of the geometry and graph structures present not just analysis of graphs that have already either been generated by UCL Depthmap or loaded in from elsewhere 12 Summary UCL Depthmap is a multi functioned speed optimised stand alone program for Windows 2000 XP or Vista Sometimes the level of functionality can make the software complicated to use but my aim as a programmer is to keep the interface as simple as possible and incorporate best practice examples from other programs Recently added features include the use of the scroll wheel to zoom in and out or to right click to pan as in Rhino McNeel 2007 and other CAD 50 UCL Depthmap packages as well as the left hand sidebar to choose attributes All these features are intended to make the user interface quicker and easier to use However I do not believe that usability should compromise the functionality and as many features as possible are accessible to all users of UCL Depthmap to allow everyone the ability to perform novel research as well to conduct powerful anal
83. ter The graph 4 SPOT Figure 2 An example of intervisibility graph and network integration graph generated from the same positions can be said to show the visual situation created by the selected positions When choosing the show centroid command figure 3 is an arrow within the isovist lit The arrow goes from the isovist s starting point to the centre of the isovist This feature is added only for further evaluation and is not backed up with any systematic studies All graphs are related to layers that can be turned on and off Each isovist position carries information about its relation with other isovist positions When using the show graph command a visibility network between the isovist positions is secleted Each node of the network shows an RA relative asymmetry value and a circle the size of the circle depends on the RA value There is also a line shown between those positions seeing each other figure 3 The thickness of the line indicates the distance between the positions following a ten grade scale depending upon the size of the line drawing The RA describes the integration of a node by a value between or equal to 0 and 1 where all low values describe high interactions RA is calculated by the formula RA 2 MD 1 k 2 When using the move isovist command it is possible to click and drag the isovist to any position in the drawing area The isovist centroid and network graph changes in real time
84. that it is impossible to run UCL Depthmap on other operating systems such as MacOS or UNIX This does not mean UCL Depthmap cannot be run on a Mac however On a new Intel Mac you can install Microsoft Windows in addition to MacOS and if you obtain a copy of Parallels Desktop or similar software you can run MacOS and Microsoft Windows at the same time On an older Mac you can run emulator software allowing the Mac to operate as if it were running Windows Long term it is intended that at least the core UCL Depthmap functionality will be ported to MacOS and UNIX allowing the speed of UCL Depthmap if not all the operations available on the Windows version to be run natively This paper will run through new developments in UCL Depthmap starting with the analysis before going onto some of the new features that make it usable for the space syntax practitioner the addition of data layers derived columns and scattergrams In addition to those discussed version 7 has incorporated a feature long requested by users the ability to draw sketch maps for yourself This ability has been excluded until now as most UCL Depthmap usage has been to look at architectural plans and these are typically already available in DXF format Hence DXF import was the first feature to be added into UCL Depthmap The importer written by the author is freeware and is now used by WebmapAtHome Dalton 2004 as well as UCL Depthmap However as users begin t
85. the introduction of axial point intelligibility and axial point synergy Dalton 2007 This research work appears to create a measure were similar patches of space indicated by islands of continuous colour appear to indicate areas of natural neighbourhood These research algorithms are presented to permit other researchers to access and confirm or refute the findings and expand this fascinating area To facilitate checking of the neighbourhood mapping WebmapAthome also provides a general point mapping mechanism that might be explored to find some unexpected structures 15 Axial randomisation One problem when looking at the findings of many investigations into the structure of axial maps is the question to what extent the findings are the product of design intent rather than the reasonable results of the presence of axial lines at a certain density Axial randomisation permits a range of null hypothesises to be tested The axial randomisation feature produces an axial map that has exactly the same number of axial lines with precisely the same length and angle distribution The resulting random axial map has the same overall axial density the lines lie within the same overall extent and is guaranteed to be continuous there is a route from every axial line to every other axial line By comparing the source axial map with a number of randomised axial maps it is possible to extract out to what degree a configuration or structure is inherent
86. tions to open the map data build topology among the axial lines in the map and compute configurational properties 2 A typical session in Segmen The user interacts with Segmen by typing Common Lisp functions in the window The following sequence of functions is the operation the user takes in a typical analysis of an axial segment map Listing 1 The basic series of functions typical in Segmen open table mif t file Barnsbury MIF depthmap t read unlink data file Barnsbury_unlink txt build topology remove ends t leave if longer than percent 25 calc sys2 weight traditional radius 3 calc choice2 weight traditional radius 3 t calc sys2 weight simple radius 4 rad mode route length calc choice2 weight simple radius 4 8 12 16 24 32 t rad mode route length 28 Segmen eAAa Terminal dx86cl64 80x24 un Lk L DAT 2083 data S1 ion 1 1 pr Figure 1 Segmen in operation on Mac OS X upon launching ments and Settings da4 Application Data Segmen patch lisp Successfully loaded C Documents and Settings iida4 Desktop segmen user patch 1 sp 59 1 BETA lida hi Iida A Segmen Listener E SEGNEN 1 gt E Figure 2 Segmen in operation on Windows upon launching S Iida 29 write data mif t axial Barnsbury_ax MIF segment Barnsbury_seg MIF Each function in the above sequence does a clearly defined task which corresponds to the respective verbal d
87. ts from Turner and Penn 2002 simply select a destination at random from their field of view take a few steps towards before selecting another destination Parameters such as numbers agents within the environment the number of steps they take and field of view can be controlled as can starting location The analysis may be performed accurately counting agents passing through gates see the section on data layers below just as people can be measured passing through gates in the real world In addition to the analysis mode however the agents can also be run in interactive demo mode a 3D view of any VGA graph can be opened using the Windows menu and agents can be dropped into the environment by choosing the agent mode and clicking where you would like to add them to the plan Although pretty to look at this view offers little analytic power and it is best to use the full agent analysis tool for serious research The agent tool includes other sorts of agent in addition to the original with agents that use occlusions or length of line of sight to guide their movement Most of these are untested against real systems although there theoretical reasons why occlusion 46 UCL Depthmap uct pestimap Graph STE D sgU zi a Forte Poon B Point Map Oa clit co N maaa an die DX Not Editable atl an P ied amp Ref Number amp Agent Counts gt Connectivity Degn gt Point First Moment Agent Anaylsis Setup gt
88. ults of axial or segment maps processed in UCL Depthmap Turner 2004 Export UCL Depthmap unlinks Exports Confeego unlinks for use in Depthmap or any other software that defines them as point coordinates J Gil C Stutz A Chiaradia 17 7 5 ey SSIES ERERIAm Ss xisialal zi ES eS EE EEA as NIIE ic als f aI 2 wi ic als l aI als lol me a rR femes aus oo000000u00D gy foo ocooo0o000000 DOO ooo 00000000000 Figure 1 Typical workspace with pedestrian observation and survey maps Import UCL Depthmap VGA Graph Imports the graph of a VGA Turner et al 2001 point analysis processed in Depthmap This is used for further isovist analysis within Confeego Convert UCL Depthmap VGA Grid Converts the points from a VGA analysis processed in Depthmap into grid tiles for further display and analysis within Confeego Compile Place Syntax Results Compiles the results from several Place Syntax St hle et al 2005 analysis into a single table 3 2 Data entry Gate counts Prepares a table for entering pedestrian gate counts Snapshots Provides a toolbar for entering static snapsh
89. urban systems and complex buildings Notes 1Confeego was created by Chris Stutz Jorge Gil Eva Friedrich and Corey Klaasmeyer To register for a copy of Confeego you should visit the following URL http www spacesyntax org register aspx Please note that the software is free for academic use only and we will have to verify your academic status before we can authorise your account 3If you use Confeego for your research project please remember to credit it as follows Space Syntax Limited 2007 Confeego v2 0 London UK 4The software is continuously tested but is not 100 free of bugs especially when run in new environments and using different data sets If you encounter any bugs in Confeego please record the exact conditions in which it occurred in an email message and send it to softwaresupport spacesyntax com 5If you want to suggest new features for future versions of Confeego please send them out in an email to the support email address Please note that it may not be possible to implement all suggestions 6Because the software is made available for free only limited technical support is available Please refer to the documentation provided with Confeego or email softwaresupport spacesyntax com Space Syntax Limited cannot offer any telephone support nor offers technical support for MapInfo Professional JMP or the Microsoft Windows operating system 22 Confeego References Conroy Dalton R Dalton N 2001 Omnivista An appl
90. wan et al 2003 among others There is also what Batty 2003 defines as the primal and dual problem of graphs that conventional spatial analysis gives precedence to points or areas and space and place syntax emphasizes lines From this one can also draw the conclusion that the experiential or the cognitive point of view has not won much acclaim within spatial analysis that is that one deal with system descriptions rather than life world descriptions and that it is the former that dominates the foundations of urban design and planning practice A switch in geographic accessibility analysis from points to lines might then imply more than it at first seems namely design resting on knowledge derived from the point of view of the people designed for rather than from the bureaucracies of planning and design Notes 1What is called geometric here seems to come close to what is also known as pre geographic elsewhere e g Miller 2000 2We shall keep in mind that the lack of description of spatial content is deliberate within space syntax since one wants to control the architectural variable A Stahle L Marcus A Karlstr m 41 3The name Place Syntax was first suggested by our colleague Daniel Koch who furthermore has been a great support for our work with the Place Syntax Tool 4Gustav Algotsson Martin Fitger John Jansson Ranin Jouda Bj rn Lalin G ran Lindmark Linus L fstr m Max Thoursie and Hanna Wij
91. yses of large and complex systems be those point visibility isovist agent axial or segment based Notes 1UCL Depthmap is offered free to academic users via Space Syntax Limited Please see http www vr ucl ac uk depthmap for more details The name Depthmap is a registered trade mark of another organisation UCL Depthmap has no connection to it Depthmap was originally named after the key function it performs to map depths of spatial units before the mark was registered 3C or C is the core language used to write most professional software for computers such as Word Excel and even the operating system itself References Benedikt M L 1979 To take hold of space Isovists and isovist fields Environment and Planning B Planning and Design 6 1 47 65 Conroy R A 2001 Spatial navigation in immersive virtual environments Ph D thesis Bartlett School of Graduate Studies UCL London Conroy Dalton R Dalton N 2001 Omnivista An application for isovist field and path analysis In Peponis et al 2001 pp 25 1 25 10 Dalton N 1988a Arman UCL London Dalton N 1988b SpaceBox UCL London Dalton N 1990 Pesh UCL London Dalton N Peponis J Conroy Dalton R 2003 To tame a TIGER one has to know its nature Extending weighted angular integration analysis to the description of GIS road center line data for large scale urban analysis In Hanson J Ed Procee

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