Application of graph theory to the morphological analysis of settlements

Abstract

In the following paper, the analyses of morphology of settlements were conducted using graph methods. The intention of the author was to create a quantifiable and simple measure, which, in a quantitative way, would express the degree of development of a graph (the spatial pattern of settlement). When analysing examples of graphs assigned to a set of small towns and large villages, it was noticed that the graph development index should depend on: a relative number of edges in relation to the number of nodes (β index), the number of cycles (urban blocks), which evidences the complexity of the spatial pattern of settlement, and the average rank of nodes of a graph, which expresses the degree of complexity of a street network.