AIRNET: A Programme for Generating Intercity Networks

Abstract

Despite growing interest in the study of intercity networks, researchers routinely lament the difficulties involved in obtaining the necessary data. This paper introduces and demonstrates a new programme, AIRNET, which generates intercity networks from publicly available data. Specifically, AIRNET processes airline traffic data from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) to produce networks among US cities and airports. These data and networks are restricted to US cities, but nonetheless offer two major benefits to researchers seeking intercity network data. First, AIRNET produces four types of network—route, origin–destination, business and leisure—that can be used to explore distinct research questions and which can be customised using adjustable parameters that alter how the network is created. Secondly, it can produce each of these networks at multiple time points beginning in 1993, thereby providing researchers access to one of the only sources of longitudinal, dynamic intercity networks.