Basic routing with OS Open Data and QGIS
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Drivetime analysis is a tool used to determine which locations are accessible from a point within a certain time or distance based on a road network.
Ordnance Survey has a number of road network products of different levels of detail:
OS MasterMap Highways Network – Roads
High Complexity
Premium
A topologically structured link and node representation of GB's road network
OS MasterMap Highways Network – Routing and Asset Management (RAMI)
Most Complex
Premium
The content of Roads with additional information on the management of roads as an asset and routing information
OS Open Roads
Lower Complexity
Open
An open high-level view of GB's road network
OS NGD Transport Network
High Complexity
Available under the PSGA
The OS NGD equivalent of our topological road network
OS NGD Routing and Asset Management
High Complexity
Available under the PSGA
The OS NGD equivalent of our additional RAMI data
Multi-modal Routing Network
Most Complex
Available under the PSGA
New data for integrated routing between road, rail, pedestrian, etc.
We will use OS Open Roads for the road network drive time analysis.
OS Open Roads is our free, high-level road network dataset and is our simplest representation of Great Britain’s roads.
Processing
Download OS Open Roads from the OS Data Hub.
Select the GeoPackage file format for this analysis
Extract the GPKG file and load into QGIS.
Open Roads contains three feature types: Motorway Junction, RoadLink and RoadNode
Optional - To reduce the processing time of the next steps consider either clipping the road_link layer to your area of interest (AOI) once you have downloaded the data or selecting the links for the area you want and then right-click on the layer -> Export -> Save Selected Features As and then you will have a dataset for just the area you need.
In QGIS, right click on the road_link layer and select 'Toggle Editing'
Right click on the road_link layer and click to open the Attribute Table (This may take a while to open)
Click on Open Field Calculator to add a column for the speed data
Check Create a new field
Input speed_kph to name new field
Copy and paste the below code into the expression tab
QGIS has a built in Network Analysis tools such as service area and shortest path. However, for a visually clearer output we will be using a plugin called QNEAT3
Select the QNEAT3 Toolbox from the toolbox panel and select Iso-Area as Polygons
Fill in the pop up box as shown here:
Visualising the output
In the Layer Properties window under the Symbology tab:
Select 'Categorized'
In the value field select '1.2 cost_level
Select a suitable Color ramp
Change the fill for 'all other values' to transparent
Add a base map of your choice, we have used the OS Maps API Light style here:
Simple drivetime analysis
All open-source data and software
Visualisation of distributions and hard to access areas
Overview of how accessible your services are
Identify areas for more detailed study
