Abstract

Using the Field Calculator to Estimate International Freight on Corridors
Track: Transportation
Authors: Jon Williams, Arturo Bujanda, Juan Villa

The timely movement of freight is vital to the national economy. To better anticipate infrastructure needs, it is important to have accurate estimates of freight volumes. This research presents a methodology to estimate freight flows along corridors serving international trade. This approach combines a shortest path analysis with the use of the field calculator to assign tons of freight to a road and a rail network in ArcGIS. Using national data for flows of international freight, researchers used origin and destination (OD) information and the shortest path to determine flows to and from the state of Texas. The field calculator was used to assign freight to the links in the networks by selecting the shortest route and incrementally adding the values to the attribute field. This was repeated for all OD pairs. Results from this methodology show encouraging findings.