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Origin of the scaling law in human mobility: hierarchy of traffic systems
Xiao-Pu Han1, Qiang Hao, Bing-Hong Wang
1Department of Modern Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
Uncovering the mechanism leading to the scaling law in human trajectories is of fundamental importance in understanding many spatiotemporal phenomena. We propose a hierarchical geographical model to mimic the real traffic system, upon which a random walker will generate a power-law-like travel displacement distribution with tunable exponent, and display a scaling behavior in the probability density of having traveled a certain distance at a certain time. The simulation results, analytical results, and empirical observations reported in D. Brockmann et al. [Nature (London) 439, 462 (2006)] agree very well with each other.
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