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Towards A Statistical Physics Of Human Mobility

Author

Listed:
  • GALLOTTI RICCARDO

    (Department of Physics, University of Bologna and INFN Bologna, via Irnerio 46, 40126 Bologna, Italy)

  • BAZZANI ARMANDO

    (Department of Physics, University of Bologna and INFN Bologna, via Irnerio 46, 40126 Bologna, Italy)

  • RAMBALDI SANDRO

    (Department of Physics, University of Bologna and INFN Bologna, via Irnerio 46, 40126 Bologna, Italy)

Abstract

In this paper, we extend some ideas of statistical physics to describe the properties of human mobility. From a physical point of view, we consider the statistical empirical laws of private cars mobility, taking advantage of a GPS database which contains a sampling of the individual trajectories of 2% of the whole vehicle population in an Italian region. Our aim is to discover possible "universal laws" that can be related to the dynamical cognitive features of individuals. Analyzing the empirical trip length distribution we study if the travel time can be used as universal cost function in a mesoscopic model of mobility. We discuss the implications of the elapsed times distribution between successive trips that shows an underlying Benford's law, and we study the rank distribution of the average visitation frequency to understand how people organize their daily agenda. We also propose simple stochastic models to suggest possible explanations of the empirical observations and we compare our results with analogous results on statistical properties of human mobility presented in the literature.

Suggested Citation

  • Gallotti Riccardo & Bazzani Armando & Rambaldi Sandro, 2012. "Towards A Statistical Physics Of Human Mobility," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 23(09), pages 1-16.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:ijmpcx:v:23:y:2012:i:09:n:s0129183112500611
    DOI: 10.1142/S0129183112500611
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Yang, Zimo & Lian, Defu & Yuan, Nicholas Jing & Xie, Xing & Rui, Yong & Zhou, Tao, 2017. "Indigenization of urban mobility," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 469(C), pages 232-243.
    2. Rutten, Philip & Lees, Michael H. & Klous, Sander & Sloot, Peter M.A., 2021. "Intermittent and persistent movement patterns of dance event visitors in large sporting venues," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 563(C).
    3. Xia, Dawen & Jiang, Shunying & Yang, Nan & Hu, Yang & Li, Yantao & Li, Huaqing & Wang, Lin, 2021. "Discovering spatiotemporal characteristics of passenger travel with mobile trajectory big data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 578(C).

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