Induced urban and regional spatial development from a "ferry-free E39". A state of the art review and a proposal for theoretical and methodological development

Report, 2014

The main reason for an investment in a “ferry-free E39” is regional and urban development. Today´s models and tools for cost/benefit analysis don´t account for: (i) Induced spatial development – i.e. longer term generation and redistribution of housing, business, commerce, industry and terminals - manifested in new buildings and facilities (ii) How resulting land-use shifts in turn lead to induced travel and freight transports – i.e. VMT This research project proposal addresses this problem in three ways: 1. A longer - run GIS model traces how major road investments between, around and trough Norwegian cities have induced new buildings (industry, offices, homes etc.) and what kind of activities – branches - that take place in those buildings over a multi-year time horizon. 2. Comparisons with impacts from similar projects like Öresundsbron. 3. A Markov chain stochastic model that replicates the historic development process and forecast future induced spatial development in a random process usually characterized as “memory-less”: the next state depends only on the current state and not on the sequence of events that preceded it. The aim for the research proposal is to develop: • A cost efficient integrated GIS-based method for database handling, mapping and analysis of huge amounts of disaggregated data. • Flow charts and standardization of data that describes the process from existing data sources to automatic analyzers and decided outcomes. The research philosophy is to: • See urban and regional development as complex system that changes from bottom up – not top down