Abstract
Human mobility is investigated using a continuum approach that allows to calculate the probability to observe a trip to any arbitrary region, and the fluxes between any two regions. The considered description offers a general and unified framework, in which previously proposed mobility models like the gravity model, the intervening opportunities model, and the recently introduced radiation model are naturally resulting as special cases. A new form of radiation model is derived and its validity is investigated using observational data offered by commuting trips obtained from the United States census data set, and the mobility fluxes extracted from mobile phone data collected in a western European country. The new modeling paradigm offered by this description suggests that the complex topological features observed in large mobility and transportation networks may be the result of a simple stochastic process taking place on an inhomogeneous landscape.
Highlights
Human mobility in form of migration or commuting becomes increasingly important nowadays due to many obvious reasons [1]: (i) traveling becomes easier, quicker and more affordable; (ii) some borders are more transparent or even inexistent for travelers; (iii) the density and growth of the population and their gross national product presents large territorial inequalities, which naturally induces mobility; (iv) the main and successful employers concentrate their location in narrow geographic regions where living costs are high, even in developed countries the employees are forced to commute; (v) large cities grow with higher rates, optimizing their functional efficiency and creating the necessary intellectual and economic surplus for sustaining this growth [2]
We consider and test a continuum approach to this model operating with fluxes between any two regions, and show that several other mobility models can be derived within the same framework
The Modeling Framework The radiation model [14] has been originally formulated to estimate commuting fluxes, i.e. the average number of commuters traveling per unit time between any two locations in a country
Summary
Human mobility in form of migration or commuting becomes increasingly important nowadays due to many obvious reasons [1]: (i) traveling becomes easier, quicker and more affordable; (ii) some borders (like the ones inside EU) are more transparent or even inexistent for travelers; (iii) the density and growth of the population and their gross national product presents large territorial inequalities, which naturally induces mobility; (iv) the main and successful employers concentrate their location in narrow geographic regions where living costs are high, even in developed countries the employees are forced to commute; (v) large cities grow with higher rates, optimizing their functional efficiency and creating the necessary intellectual and economic surplus for sustaining this growth [2]. This novel approach based on the continuum description offers a new modeling and data interpretation paradigm for understanding human mobility patterns
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