Routesand

Routesand is a term encountered in transportation planning, geographic information systems, and network routing to describe the consolidated set of routes and their attributes used for planning, analysis, and optimization within a network. It is not part of formal standards, and its exact meaning can vary between authors and applications. In general, routesand refers to a structured representation that combines multiple route options with their related data to support comparison and decision making.

A routesand typically includes the topology of the network as well as detailed attributes for each route segment. Components may encompass waypoints or nodes, edges or road segments, distances, travel times, costs, tolls, and mode constraints. Additional context such as traffic conditions, schedules, turn restrictions, reliability metrics, and risk factors can be attached to routes or segments. The data are often stored as a graph or a tabular dataset that supports multi-criteria analysis and scenario testing.

Applications of routesand span several domains. In consumer navigation, it supports presenting alternative paths and evaluating trade-offs. In logistics and supply chain planning, it enables routing under time windows, capacity constraints, and cost considerations. In emergency response and urban planning, routesand structures can facilitate rapid scenario testing and resilience analysis. It is closely related to routing graphs, route planning algorithms, and multi-criteria optimization but emphasizes the integrated view of alternatives and their contextual attributes.

See also: route planning, GIS routing, network optimization, routing graph, multi-criteria decision analysis.