Towards a Statistical Physics of Human Mobility

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

Revisiting consistency with random utility maximisation: theory and implications for practical work

While the paradigm of utility maximisation has formed the basis of the majority of applications in discrete choice modelling for over 40 years, its core assumptions have been questioned by work in both behavioural economics and mathematical psychology as well as more recently by developments in the RUM-oriented choice modelling community. This paper reviews the basic properties with a view to explaining the historical pre-eminence of utility maximisation and addresses the question of what departures from the paradigm may be necessary or wise in order to accommodate richer behavioural patterns. We find that many, though not all, of the behavioural traits discussed in the literature can be approximated sufficiently closely by a random utility framework, allowing analysts to retain the many advantages that such an approach possesses

Overview of Land Use Transport Models

The previous chapters in this Handbook have shown that spatial development, or land use, determines the need for spatial interaction, or transport, but that transport, by the accessibility it provides, also determines spatial development. However, it is difficult to empirically isolate impacts of land use on transport and vice versa because of the multitude of concurrent changes of other factors. This poses a problem if the likely impacts of integrated land-use and transport policies to reduce the demand for travel are to be predicted. There are principally three methods to predict those impacts. The first is to ask people how they would change their location and mobility behaviour if certain factors, such as land use regulations or transport costs, would change ('stated preference'). The second consists of drawing conclusions from observed decision behaviour of people under different conditions on how they would be likely to behave if these factors would change ('revealed preference'). The third method is to simulate human decision behaviour in mathematical models. All three methods have their advantages and disadvantages. Surveys can reveal also subjective factors of location and mobility decisions, however, their respondents can only make conjec-tures about how they would behave in still unknown situations, and the validity of such con