Welcome

Welcome to our trainingfacility. On the right you can find a number of modules which are designed to help you master your Flowmap skills. Each of the modules focuses upon a certain aspect of Flowmaps possibilities.

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Modules

Below are listed four modules, which provide practicals which will help you to master your Flowmap skills. Some practicals are just informative - e.g. they solely provide information on Flowmap, other practicals involve some excercises too!

Please beware: not all modules are fully functional yet!

Fully functional:
Module 1: Converting regular GIS-data to Flowmap data sets

Under construction:
Module 2: Creating airline distance tables
Module 3: Creating regular network distance tables
Module 4: Dissolving boundaries

However, if you still want to take a look at these modules you can do so by looking at it as a simple .htm file

Module 1

Converting regular GIS-data to Flowmap data sets
The amount of effort involved to convert GIS-data from other sources to Flowmap ranges from very little to rather laborious depending on the intended use. In case the dataset is only needed for displaying points, lines or polygon boundaries, you can simply convert the dataset to BNA format and you are done. On the other hand if the dataset represents a (public) transport network and is to be used for distance calculations it is necessary that topology is added, it is recommended that connectivity is checked and often attribute fields need to be copied. The full import and checking procedure make then take as much as eight steps and possibly some need to be repeated in case errors have to be repaired. In this practical we will describe the full (most laborious) conversion (and checking) procedure for each data set.

Module 2

Creating airline distance tables
When it comes to calculating distances between objects in space transport, network based distances are preferred in most cases where travel of people or goods is analysed. However in some cases a transport network is not available or not relevant and an airline distance table must or can be used in stead. In other cases, like detour analysis, an airline distance table is a necessary ingredient for the analysis of the quality of a network. This module will teach you how to calculate airline distances between origin and destination within Flowmap.

Module 3

Creating regular network distance tables
When it comes to calculating distances between objects in space transport network based distances are preferred in most cases where travel of people or goods is analysed. Calculating a full set of network distances may involve considerable processing time and also several parameters need to be set. Flowmap does not calculate distances on the fly but stores distance tables in combination with index files for fast usage in various analytical operations. Flowmap can take directionality into account but not full turntables, hence is not suitable to produce directives. For the rest, this module will learn you everything about creating a regular network distance table.

Module 4

Dissolving boundaries
Dissolving boundaries is always a useful tool. It is about merging smaller adjacent polygons into one or more larger polygons (provided that they share a common attribute value). This module will teach you how to dissolve boundaries within Flowmap.