Designing Geodatabases for Transportation. J. Allison Butler

the next level of database design complexity. This design has two advantages over the independent segment approach. First, it can be used to construct a network for pathfinding. Second, it can supply features for storing intersection attributes or organizing such data as a traffic signal inventory or a crash reporting system.

      If you do need a navigable network, you will likely want to add formal intersection node features to serve as junctions for segments, which become links (edges) in the network. As will be shown in chapter 13, the ArcGIS Network Analyst extension can construct junction features for you. However, there are benefits to constructing them yourself, such as providing information about the junctions to the pathfinding application. You may also want to provide different travel costs for each intersection subtype.

      Figure 4.11 Node offset Sometimes you need to reference a location between nodes at a point along a link. One approach is to identify the node (origin), the link to travel down, and a distance to travel. This design is actually quite common, although the nodes are usually implied rather than expressed. We call it addressing, and it serves as the foundation for all one-dimensional (1D) location referencing systems.

      One of the issues with any segmentation scheme is that you will eventually need to refer to a location within a segment. Whether you need to locate a midblock intersection, illustrate parking restrictions, or identify sign locations, it will be frustrating to find yourself limited by an indivisible segment. One approach is the node-offset linear measure. You use this approach all the time; you just call it addressing, geocoding, or project stationing. Pick a reference feature, like an intersection or a node, and a segment or link to travel down, and then specify how far to go. This is sort of like a route-milelog approach, but the routes are very short.

       Mapping applications

      If all you really need to do is make maps with your transportation geodatabase, then you should use a design that emphasizes the structure and attributes appropriate to such an application. Such a database would include annotation classes in addition to the feature classes of a facility inventory.

      Figure 4.12 From the set of thematic layers described in chapter 8 of Designing Geodatabases: Case Studies in GIS Data Modeling, by David Arctur and Michael Zeiler (ESRI Press 2004).

      The top part of this transportation mapping database is intended to support the editing process. It contains all the elemental pieces of the highway mode of travel like you may have in a normal segmented data structure of the type discussed above. These four feature classes exist in a transportation topology that will help ensure that clean linework is produced.

      The bottom part of the database contains the classes that will be used to produce the maps. The RoadsCartoDissolve feature class contains the results of merging the various road segments in the MajorHwy, Ramp, and Road feature classes to produce the highway facility linework for our maps. This intermediary has been added to the mapping process in order to provide complex geometry. For example, you may want to outline major highways in black with a red center fill, or outline unpaved roads in black and use a white center fill. You cannot get this appearance through line styles applied to a single feature class. What you will need to do is produce a wide black line and overlay with an identical, but slightly narrower red or white line. This means printing two copies of the road features with slightly different line styles. It also means merging linear features so that intersections look outlined rather than overlapping. A valid values table (RoadsCartoDissolve_VVT) says which combinations are legitimate.