ISSS608 2017-18 T1 Group5 Proposal

    Linking the globe: An Interactive Dashboard for Exploring Aviation Expansion Along the "Belt and Road"

PROPOSAL

REPORT

POSTER

APPLICATION|

Background

What is the "Belt and Road"?
The Belt and Road (B&R) refers to the land-based "Silk Road Economic Belt" and the seagoing "21st Century Maritime Silk Road". The routes cover more than 60 countries and regions from Asia to Europe via Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, West Asia and the Middle East. The B&R countries currently accounting for around 31% of global GDP and more than 34% of the world's merchandise trade.
Unveiled in 2013, the strategy underlines China's push to take a larger role in global affairs with a China-centered trading network. The Belt and Road initiative is set to reinvigorate the seamless flow of capital, goods and services between Asia and the rest of the world, by promoting further market integration and forging new ties among communities.

Countries Along the "Belt and Road"

Figure 1. Geographical Coverage of the Belt and Road
According to the action plan, the Belt will have three routes and the Road will have two routes:
The Silk Road Economic Belt:
• China—Central Asia—Russia—Europe (the Baltic)
• China—Central Asia—West Asia—Persian Gulf—Mediterranean Sea
• China—Southeast Asia—South Asia— Indian Ocean
The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road:
• Coastal China—South China Sea—Indian Ocean—Europe
• Coastal China—South China Sea—South Pacific

Figure 2. Countries along the Belt and Road

Aviation Sector in the "Belt and Road"
The expansion of air routes and the development of air transport becomes one of the development focuses of the B&R initiative. China’s air transportation, aviation infrastructure and aircraft manufacturing are expected to achieve unprecedented demand growth and the industry’s internationalization is expected to accelerate.
In May 2016, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) issued Opinions on further deepening the reform of civil aviation, which proposed to further open up airspace, optimize the allocation of international traffic rights and encourage civil aviation enterprises to “go out” and compete in the international aviation market through the use of capital.

Objectives

The main purpose of this project is to investigate the flight network between China and the “Belt and Road” countries to explore the economic connectivity and development potential.
A visual exploration tool will be implemented using R shiny which can be used to easily explore and understand the flight network.

Analysis

• Air route distribution & connectivity across different B&R regions
• Air route distribution & connectivity across different B&R countries
• Performance of Chinese Airports linking B&R in terms of passenger throughput, cargo throughput, movements and connectivity and propose new air-routes to relief transportation pressure)
• Performance of Chinese airline companies contributing to B&R

Dataset

Data used in this project is crawled and collected from VariFlight, flightradar24 and official website of CAAC. The following figure is part of the raw data we crawl using Python.


• All air-routes from China to B&R countries (latest from Variflight)

 • Origin
 • Destination
 • Airline Company
 • Departure and Arrival Time

• Airports in China (2014 - 2016 from CAAC)

 • IATA Code
 • ICAO Code
 • Airport Name
 • Geographical Information: 
   Airport Latitude, Longitude, Altitude, Subordinate Province and City
 • GDP and Population of Subordinate City
 • Passenger Throughput (2014-2016)
 • Cargo Tonnage (2014-2016)
 • Total Annual Air Traffic Movements (2014-2016)

• Airline Companies in China (latest from Flightradar24)

 • Airline Name
 • Number of Aircrafts by model

Reference

[1] http://www.caac.gov.cn Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) - The aviation authority under the Ministry of Transport of the People's Republic of China. It oversees civil aviation and investigates aviation accidents and incidents.

[2] https://eng.yidaiyilu.gov.cn/ Belt and Road Portal - Official website of Belt and Road, which provides information, data and latest news of B&R.

[3] https://www.flightradar24.com/ Flightradar24 -Live flight tracker that shows air traffic in real time.

[4] http://map.variflight.com/stat Variflight - A Chinese professional flight service website, which aims to provide the diverse flight travel plans for the users.