Compare methods

	Network Distance Analysis	Desire Line Analysis
Field	Human Geography	Human Geography
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1959	1955
Originator	Edsger W. Dijkstra (shortest-path foundation)	Transportation planning tradition (urban transportation studies)
Type	Measurement of distance and travel cost along a network rather than straight-line	Mapping and analysis of origin–destination travel demand as straight flow lines
Seminal source	Dijkstra, E. W. (1959). A note on two problems in connexion with graphs. Numerische Mathematik, 1(1), 269–271.	Boyce, D. E., & Williams, H. C. W. L. (2015). Forecasting Urban Travel: Past, Present and Future. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham. ISBN: 9781848440319
Aliases	Shortest-Path Analysis, Network Travel-Cost Analysis, OD Cost Matrix Analysis, Routing Distance Analysis	Desire Line Mapping, OD Flow Line Analysis, Travel Desire Lines, Desire Path Flow Analysis
Related	4	4
Summary	Network distance analysis measures how far apart places are along a real network — roads, paths, rails — rather than as the crow flies, recognizing that movement is constrained to edges and junctions. Its engine is the shortest-path problem solved by Dijkstra's 1959 algorithm, which finds the least-cost route between locations over a weighted graph and scales up to origin–destination cost matrices between many points. Network distance and travel time are the realistic inputs to accessibility, routing, location, and flow analyses, and their ratio to straight-line distance — the detour or circuity index — itself diagnoses how indirect a network is.	Desire line analysis reveals the underlying demand for travel between places by drawing straight lines that connect each origin to each destination, with line width or weight proportional to the volume of flow between them. The term comes from transportation planning, where a 'desire line' represents the direct, idealized path a traveller would take if no network constrained them — capturing where people want to go, not how the roads make them go. Aggregating trips into an origin–destination matrix and rendering it as weighted lines exposes the dominant corridors of movement, making desire lines a foundational tool for visualizing and analysing travel demand.