- Title
- Viraph: exploring the potentials of visibility graphs and their analysis
- Creator
- Amini Behbahani, Peiman; Gu, Ning; Ostwald, Michael
- Relation
- Visualization in Engineering Vol. 5, no. 17
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40327-017-0056-z
- Publisher
- SpringerOpen
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- Background: Visibility Graph Analysis (VGA) is a space syntax method for quantifying some socio-spatial properties of the built environment by mapping the floor plan into a grid. Presently, VGA mainly relies on mean values of the measures while the individual room-to-room ("interspatial") relations are not considered or achievable by the common VGA software - depthMapX. Methods: A new software package, Viraph, is developed using a weighed Dijkstra algorithm to calculate depths. The floor plan is mapped into convex areas to increase the speed of calculation. The interspatial relations are calculated by averaging the point-to-point depths in-between. Results: The effectiveness of Viraph is demonstrated through a case study, which compares the houses from the late Victorian era with Wright's Prairie style with a detailed analysis of Francis Little House (designed in 1902). In summary, Viraph has showed a significantly higher calculation speed for VGA, and capability of capturing some socio-spatial relations of the styles by measuring the interspatial depth. Conclusions: Viraph's improved speed for measurement has made VGA analysis more accessible for general design researchers and practitioners. Further this paper shows that the added feature of measuring the interspatial depth opens a new perspective for enhancing traditional space syntax analysis.
- Subject
- space syntax; visibility graph analysis; viraph; Francis Little House
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1386147
- Identifier
- uon:32367
- Identifier
- ISSN:2213-7459
- Rights
- © The Author(s). 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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