Accessibility in transportation networks probabilistic versus deterministic approach

Abstract

Existing accessibility measures imply either a perfectly legible structure of the communication network, or a perfectly informed “visitor”. In the study of transportation networks (as well as in the study of large architectural complexes, for example) this implied assumption is extremely unrealistic. Markov chain is interpreted as a model of communication process, and an information-theoretic measure is derived for the measurement of accesibility in conditions of uncertainty of the visitor about the structure of the communication network. A number of elementary network patterns are compared using deterministic and probabilistic measures of accessibility. It is claimed that different patterns differ in the degree of susceptibility to uncertainty in the communication process.