Book Review: Transportation Network Analysis

Transportation Network Analysis by M. G. H. Bell and Yasunori Iida is a book for the expert rather than the novice. Drawing heavily on academic knowledge this book almost requires a degree in civil engineering before you even start reading. On a side note, I was lucky enough to meet up with both Bell and Iida at INSTR 2004 the Second International Symposium on Transportation Network Reliability. If you’re seriously into transportation planning and analysis this is the book you should not miss. It teaches you all the basic concepts you need to know. For my part, I mostly use only one chapter from the book for my research, others may do the same with different parts of the book. That’s what makes it so useful.

The importance of transportation

The fabric of all societies is held together by networks of various kinds, such as water supply, energy supply, sewage disposal, communication and, perhaps most importantly, transportation. Transportation Network Analysis is concerned primarily with the spatial, but also the temporal, nature of the movement of people and freight across land, where the movement is channelled onto roads or railways.

Reference

Bell , M.G.H., Iida, Y. (1997) Network Reliability. In: Transportation Network Analysis, eds. M.G.H. Bell and Y Iida, pp.179-192, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester