Characterizing the human mobility pattern in a large street network

Bin Jiang, Junjun Yin, and Sijian Zhao
Phys. Rev. E 80, 021136 – Published 31 August 2009

Abstract

Previous studies demonstrated empirically that human mobility exhibits Lévy flight behavior. However, our knowledge of the mechanisms governing this Lévy flight behavior remains limited. Here we analyze over 72000 people’s moving trajectories, obtained from 50 taxicabs during a six-month period in a large street network, and illustrate that the human mobility pattern, or the Lévy flight behavior, is mainly attributed to the underlying street network. In other words, the goal-directed nature of human movement has little effect on the overall traffic distribution. We further simulate the mobility of a large number of random walkers and find that (1) the simulated random walkers can reproduce the same human mobility pattern, and (2) the simulated mobility rate of the random walkers correlates pretty well (an R square up to 0.87) with the observed human mobility rate.

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  • Received 17 October 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.80.021136

©2009 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Bin Jiang1,*, Junjun Yin2,†, and Sijian Zhao3,‡

  • 1Department of Technology and Built Environment, Division of Geomatics, University of Gävle, Sweden
  • 2Digital Media Centre, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland
  • 3Academy of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management, Beijing Normal University, China

  • *bin.jiang@hig.se
  • junjun.yin@student.dit.ie
  • scanzhao@hotmail.com

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Vol. 80, Iss. 2 — August 2009

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