victor,
quite an interesting question. i suppose there must already exist a formal
methodology to deal with this situation. I am personally of the opinion
that urban transport networks (e.g. roads, railways) already contain some
degree of integration measures by virtue of their properties such as speed,
capacity, safety, diretion (one-ways etc.), attraction (shops, garages,
scenic routes etc.). In my field of research (terrain analysis), I deal
with this situation in two ways:
I assign a certain amount of weights to features (e.g. if you want to go
faster then you would take the motorway even if you could potentially take
a "topological" short cut via a network of small roads. Therefore, what I
am essentially suggesting is as follows:
Could you assign certain weights to the unused links (in fact all the
links) but still have them in your analysis for "topological completeness"?
2. Secondly, please note, that this will also take you the edges of the
transport planning discipline (an active mailing list at
http://www.its.leeds.ac.uk/utsg/). In transport planning, such "unconnected
networks" are sometimes assigned (linked) to a connected part of the
network (just pick any nearest road to the isolated path) which yields a
completely connected network. But if the paths are blocked then thats a
different issue.
i hope this brain spill helps !
sanjay.
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