METHOLOGY FOR CITY LEVEL URBAN ROAD NETWORK CONNECTIVITY ANALYSIS USING GEOGRAPHICAL INFORAMTION SYSTEMS (GIS)

In most of the urban cities in India, the existing road network structure is unable to meet the increasing travel demand. In this context, there is a need to utilize the existing road network in a more efficient manner. To effectively utilize the existing road network, the structural parameters like connectivity, accessibility, hierarchy and morphology should be analyzed and evaluated. This study aimed to analyze and evaluate the road network structure of Hyderabad city, Telangana state, India in terms of its connectivity. Different places in Hyderabad city were considered to quantify the connectivity measures such as alpha index, beta index, gamma index, eta index, Cyclomatic number and Aggregate transportation score. Five kilometers radius buffers were drawn from the center of each location to compute the connectivity measures. The results of the study may act as a guide to the transportation planning authorities to understand the level of connectivity at each location in the city and implement better planning practices to improve the level of connectivity in the city. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is a platform used for better decision making in urban transportation planning. The present study also tried to prove the efficiency of GIS in analyzing the connectivity based performance of the transport network structure in the study area.