Pitney Bowes MapInfo Professional - Manual (Page 421)

You can only access this Drivetime data and calculation functionality on an Envinsa 4.0 routing server.
The Driving Regions web service helps you create isochrone and isodistance buffers using points in
your own data.
An isochrone or a time buffer is a region that shows the area that a driver can reach from a starting point
in a specific amount of time based on the speeds specified in the routing network. For example, if you
wanted to put together an event and invite the customers who live within an hour's drive of the event
site, you could create a time buffer for known customers within an hour's drive. The service would then
use the average driving speeds defined in the road network to calculate the time buffer from your event.
You can then display your data within those buffer regions using a Select or SQL Select statement.
An isodistance or a distance buffer is a region that shows the area that a driver can reach from the
starting point in the same distance. For example, if you want to contact all of the customers who live
within 50 miles of the event instead of one hour, you could calculate the distance using the Drivetime
web service, using similar logic.
Effectively, you are creating buffers from a point or table of points based on the server's road network
for specified times or distances. Using the Driving Region service options, you can control the way this
information displays and the number of time and distance buffers you create at a time.
• For more information, see Creating Time or Distance Buffers for a Table and Rules when Adding a
Driving Value in the Help System.
How are Time and Distance Buffers Calculated?
This is a raster map of a portion of a major city, but it could just as easily be your community.
You can travel further on a limited access highway than a local road in the same amount of time due to
the difference in speed limits.
In it, you can see limited access highways, major roads with buildings on them, and local streets with
homes. The speed limits on these streets vary depending upon their size and use. The routing server
manages the speeds for each road type and uses those speeds to calculate the distance a driver could
travel in a specific amount of time. For example a driver could get further in an hour on a highway, than
on a local road, due to the average speed limits on those roads.
421 MapInfo Professional User Guide
Chapter 16: Working with Data from a Web Service