Measuring Distances

Abstract

The choice of a suitable distance function plays a crucial role for a good estimation of travel distances in realistic environments. Depending on the mode of travel and the type of problem considered, we may use, for example, Euclidean distances to model airtravel or the Manhattan metric for transportation problems in New York. This indicates that different modes of transportation require different ways of distance estimation. Consequently, an increasing effort to estimate travel distances with high accuracy has arisen from the growing variety in the transportation sector.