Via Analyzing the effects of spatial configuration on human movement and social interaction in Canadian Arctic communities (Dr. Peter C. Dawson - University of Calgary, Canada):

Configurational modeling of urban networks has become a major focus of space syntax studies. Such models are constructed by breaking up the urban layout of a city or town into the fewest and longest lines of sight and access that pass through all possible routes of movement. The resulting axial map can then be analyzed using a number of statistical measures that describe the configurational properties of the network. A measure of how accessible each axial line segment is to neighboring lines can be obtained by simply counting the number of connections per segment (Hillier et al., 1993: 35). In addition to measuring the connectivity of a line segment, the relationship of each axial line to the whole urban system provides an important global measure called integration. The most integrated lines in a network are those with the shortest average trip lengths to all other destinations within the grid. In contrast, the most segregated lines are those in which trip lengths vary to a much greater degree. In other words, integration measures the mean depth of every axial line in the grid relative to all other lines (Hillier et al., 1993: 35).