Digital Atlas of Transportation
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Luis, C.; 2Lourdes, H.; 3Resendiz, H.
1INSTITUTO DE GEOGRAFIA, UNAM Email: luis.chias@gmail.com
2INSTITUTO DE GEOGRAFIA, UNAM Email: mlhp74@comunidad.unam.mx
3INSTITUTO DE GEOGRAFIA, UNAM Email: hresendiz@gmail.com
Abstract
In the last 15 years development of transportation in Mexico has generated significant changes in territorial and technical-operational terms, due to its impact as vector and restructuring of social relations, economic and environmental benefits in the local, regional, national and cross-border. Some macro-economic factors such as globalization, have been key factor in the development of transportation investment projects in the country in terms of connectivity and global exchange of goods and services. We should underline that Mexico is a very special case in terms of transportation, the strong cross-border historical relationship with the United States, has importantly influenced the total transportation system structure and function. In this context, the article proposes the design of a thematic atlas focused on the Mexican transportation system, which has as main features the dynamism of geotechnology. This new development option mapping is characterized by its visual richness: since it generates various types of displays as well as interactive and dynamic views of the same object. In this way we have at the same time, the uniqueness and variety of the object in their representation. Thus, the digital mapping enables in a single view to implement aspects of the metric rigor, display quality and esthetics. The Digital Atlas of transportation is an initiative born into the academic unit of Geotechnology in Infrastructure, Transport and Sustainability (GITS), of the Institute of Geography, UNAM, and has as principal purpose generate digital map information for display, query, and download with a particular emphasis on the major issues of the transportation system in Mexico. To which have been used geo-technology tools such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), cartographic displays, web map services, geospatial PDF and Keyhole Markup Language (KML). The Atlas has been designed in different phases of development. In the first phase (which we present in the ICC), the aim is to identify the general characteristics of transportation infrastructure in Mexico, and some features of connectivity and accessibility. The spatial analysis is a theoretical and methodological basis that through statistical techniques, mapping and graphics; allows to analyze geographic data and provides knowledge to respond to the diverse conditions of transport networks. The first part, consists of an introductory section that positions Mexico in an international context through some indicators of competitiveness in transportation. The second part presents in a general context, the main physical-geographical and socio-economic factors which have a close relationship with the various modes of transport. The third part, analyzes the condition of the infrastructure of the four main modes of transport: roads, ports, airports and railroad system. In this part, features as the total road network, major highway corridors, projects under construction, ports and airports, as well as the structure of the rail network are identified. The fourth part focuses on presenting some characteristics of the transportation services in its various forms, as movements and volumes of transported passengers and cargo, the different destination, and how they generate flows. Finally, the last section presents some indicators of the transport infrastructure, which is used as theoretical and methodological framework of network analysis, and some indicators such a morphology analysis, density and transport network coverage have been considered.