Development of Web Based Gravity Model for Forecasting the Commuters

This paper is concerned primarily with the way in which transport affects population migrations as well and hence regions’ growth and development. The main results of my contribution are described in the last chapter of this work is a framework of integrating of the Gravity-model into World Wide Web pages is presented.
The research in this paper was performed at University of Ljubljana in the framework of the project – Regional Development influenced by the new Schengen border regime and by improved transportation networks.
The diploma work is divided in four main Chapters.
The first Chapter introduce the reader with such definition as population migration, gravity-model, linear regression calculations, geographical information systems (GIS), time spending distances calculations, OmniTRANS as an integrated multi-modal transportation planning package, and the possibility how to attract the citizens to participate in getting information about regional development and interregional migration.
The second Chapter provides a review of the Slovenian ways infrastructure, and particularly transport infrastructure has been defined, measured and incorporated into spatial-gravity model. In many cases, the results of approaches are provided with empirical base from which the model was built, although specific examples are given for better understanding of models principles.
The third Chapter pays attention to tools were used for the attracting the citizens to participate in getting information about regional development and interregional migration.
The fourth Chapter describes the part of project that was created in accordance with main project of Regional Development influenced by the new Schengen border regime and by improved transportation networks. This Chapter indicates the way in which it is possible to use gravity model thought World Wide Web pages. The main emphasis in this diploma work under the title: “Development of WEB Based Gravity Model for Forecasting the Commuters’ Flows in Slovenia” consists of intensive engineering work, which results are broadly presented in: The engineer project consists of 22 figures, 5 table, 21 references, and 4 appendexis.
This Diploma participates a step towards decision – making procedures in the new European Country Slovenia, to allow citizens to participate in making decisions, which concern them. One of the most important fields of decision making is the investments decision to improve accessibility to work which they wish to have. Greater possibility to get desired job depends on possibility of daily commuting to broader area as well as when they can participate in decision making about allocation of jobs in the community and near surroundings. This study combines two luminous areas, [1] geographical information systems (GIS) in modeling accessibility fields to the Slovene municipal centres and [2] applied the combined technologies that presents the system from its conceptual model, logical system design, to the system implementation into Web pages.
This work describes and explains the theoretical principles for handling spatial data in geographical information systems using the Gravity model and practical principles for usability of Gravity model through the Web. The text examines the different ways of how spatial data can be:
a)perceived;
b)modeled conceptually;
c)represented.
It explains how, using the standard data such as - daily migration, amount of employed or unemployed workforce, time spending distances, are collected using GIS, how they are stored, represented in the computer, retrieved, analyzed, and displayed: first using the Excel Spread Sheet Gravity model and after reproduced and displayed into Web pages. Spatial analyses and GIS are nothing without computer software, and the results in this work could not have been produced without recourses to many different programmes. In Appendix 3 is provided information about sources of licensed packages or free software that have been used while preparing this work.
The engineer work required intensive study and analyzes the factors influencing socio-economic changes on the regional level after Slovenia’s accession to the European Union, which are: the new Schengen border regime, improved transportation networks and declining industries. For this purpose the diploma work investigates and shows how far statistical models and methods of statistical inference have enabled that the aims of geographical researches can meet the solutions at considered problem areas. At the research level, the scientific methods developed in USA have been improved for economics forecasting. To add to this regional forecasting a special Model for Mobility and Migration, Lowry – like model, has been developed by the University of Ljubljana.
The engineering contribution to diploma work consists of:
analysis of Lowry – like model,
description of the geographical information systems usability in the population migration problems;
exploitation of the principles of the gravity model and spatial data been used in that;
the development of web page for the gravity model for forecasting the flow of commuters.
Information is one of the basic resources of the society in the new millennium - a common asset in the realm of the government, the private initiatives, or the individuals. Its generation, distribution and use should take place in easy access in order to be used productively by all. The popularity of these applications stems from their accessibility and usability: thousands of users can access the same data at the same time without any need to install additional software on their machines.
That is the reason why the Slovenian team of the project mentioned above has been decided to publish the Lowry – like Gravity model over the Internet pages, so that it can increase efficiency for the citizens in getting information. As a result, the use of information technologies and geographical information systems, the spatial-data about population migration and etc., has been performed as a single whole tool to facilitate such process and given task.
The MySQL storage and PHP scripting language were used in producing the web page of the gravity model. MySQL and PHP is an open source projects of the Apache Software Foundation and, not surprisingly, it is the most popular Apache HTTP server add-on module, with around 40% of the Apache HTTP servers having PHP capabilities[12]. PHP is particularly suited to web database applications because of its integration tools for the Web and database environments. In particular, the flexibility of embedding scripts in HTML pages permits easy integration with the client tier. Both PHP and MySQL are easy to use, fast, free, and powerful.…