192 research outputs found
Human mobility: Models and applications
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this recordRecent years have witnessed an explosion of extensive geolocated datasets related to human movement, enabling scientists to quantitatively study individual and collective mobility patterns, and to generate models that can capture and reproduce the spatiotemporal structures and regularities in human trajectories. The study of human mobility is especially important for applications such as estimating migratory flows, traffic forecasting, urban planning, and epidemic modeling. In this survey, we review the approaches developed to reproduce various mobility patterns, with the main focus on recent developments. This review can be used both as an introduction to the fundamental modeling principles of human mobility, and as a collection of technical methods applicable to specific mobility-related problems. The review organizes the subject by differentiating between individual and population mobility and also between short-range and long-range mobility. Throughout the text the description of the theory is intertwined with real-world applications.US Army Research Offic
Universal Scaling of Optimal Current Distribution in Transportation Networks
Transportation networks are inevitably selected with reference to their
global cost which depends on the strengths and the distribution of the embedded
currents. We prove that optimal current distributions for a uniformly injected
d-dimensional network exhibit robust scale-invariance properties, independently
of the particular cost function considered, as long as it is convex. We find
that, in the limit of large currents, the distribution decays as a power law
with an exponent equal to (2d-1)/(d-1). The current distribution can be exactly
calculated in d=2 for all values of the current. Numerical simulations further
suggest that the scaling properties remain unchanged for both random injections
and by randomizing the convex cost functions.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Network Cosmology
Prediction and control of the dynamics of complex networks is a central
problem in network science. Structural and dynamical similarities of different
real networks suggest that some universal laws might accurately describe the
dynamics of these networks, albeit the nature and common origin of such laws
remain elusive. Here we show that the causal network representing the
large-scale structure of spacetime in our accelerating universe is a power-law
graph with strong clustering, similar to many complex networks such as the
Internet, social, or biological networks. We prove that this structural
similarity is a consequence of the asymptotic equivalence between the
large-scale growth dynamics of complex networks and causal networks. This
equivalence suggests that unexpectedly similar laws govern the dynamics of
complex networks and spacetime in the universe, with implications to network
science and cosmology
Mesoscopic structure and social aspects of human mobility
The individual movements of large numbers of people are important in many
contexts, from urban planning to disease spreading. Datasets that capture human
mobility are now available and many interesting features have been discovered,
including the ultra-slow spatial growth of individual mobility. However, the
detailed substructures and spatiotemporal flows of mobility - the sets and
sequences of visited locations - have not been well studied. We show that
individual mobility is dominated by small groups of frequently visited,
dynamically close locations, forming primary "habitats" capturing typical daily
activity, along with subsidiary habitats representing additional travel. These
habitats do not correspond to typical contexts such as home or work. The
temporal evolution of mobility within habitats, which constitutes most motion,
is universal across habitats and exhibits scaling patterns both distinct from
all previous observations and unpredicted by current models. The delay to enter
subsidiary habitats is a primary factor in the spatiotemporal growth of human
travel. Interestingly, habitats correlate with non-mobility dynamics such as
communication activity, implying that habitats may influence processes such as
information spreading and revealing new connections between human mobility and
social networks.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures (main text); 11 pages, 9 figures, 1 table
(supporting information
A universal model for mobility and migration patterns
Introduced in its contemporary form by George Kingsley Zipf in 1946, but with
roots that go back to the work of Gaspard Monge in the 18th century, the
gravity law is the prevailing framework to predict population movement, cargo
shipping volume, inter-city phone calls, as well as bilateral trade flows
between nations. Despite its widespread use, it relies on adjustable parameters
that vary from region to region and suffers from known analytic
inconsistencies. Here we introduce a stochastic process capturing local
mobility decisions that helps us analytically derive commuting and mobility
fluxes that require as input only information on the population distribution.
The resulting radiation model predicts mobility patterns in good agreement with
mobility and transport patterns observed in a wide range of phenomena, from
long-term migration patterns to communication volume between different regions.
Given its parameter-free nature, the model can be applied in areas where we
lack previous mobility measurements, significantly improving the predictive
accuracy of most of phenomena affected by mobility and transport processes.Comment: Main text and supplementary informatio
Emergence of structural and dynamical properties of ecological mutualistic networks
Mutualistic networks are formed when the interactions between two classes of
species are mutually beneficial. They are important examples of cooperation
shaped by evolution. Mutualism between animals and plants plays a key role in
the organization of ecological communities. Such networks in ecology have
generically evolved a nested architecture independent of species composition
and latitude - specialists interact with proper subsets of the nodes with whom
generalists interact. Despite sustained efforts to explain observed network
structure on the basis of community-level stability or persistence, such
correlative studies have reached minimal consensus. Here we demonstrate that
nested interaction networks could emerge as a consequence of an optimization
principle aimed at maximizing the species abundance in mutualistic communities.
Using analytical and numerical approaches, we show that because of the
mutualistic interactions, an increase in abundance of a given species results
in a corresponding increase in the total number of individuals in the
community, as also the nestedness of the interaction matrix. Indeed, the
species abundances and the nestedness of the interaction matrix are correlated
by an amount that depends on the strength of the mutualistic interactions.
Nestedness and the observed spontaneous emergence of generalist and specialist
species occur for several dynamical implementations of the variational
principle under stationary conditions. Optimized networks, while remaining
stable, tend to be less resilient than their counterparts with randomly
assigned interactions. In particular, we analytically show that the abundance
of the rarest species is directly linked to the resilience of the community.
Our work provides a unifying framework for studying the emergent structural and
dynamical properties of ecological mutualistic networks.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure
Developing capacity in health informatics in a resource poor setting: lessons from Peru
The public sectors of developing countries require strengthened capacity in health informatics. In Peru, where formal university graduate degrees in biomedical and health informatics were lacking until recently, the AMAUTA Global Informatics Research and Training Program has provided research and training for health professionals in the region since 1999. The Fogarty International Center supports the program as a collaborative partnership between Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Peru and the University of Washington in the United States of America. The program aims to train core professionals in health informatics and to strengthen the health information resource capabilities and accessibility in Peru. The program has achieved considerable success in the development and institutionalization of informatics research and training programs in Peru. Projects supported by this program are leading to the development of sustainable training opportunities for informatics and eight of ten Peruvian fellows trained at the University of Washington are now developing informatics programs and an information infrastructure in Peru. In 2007, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia started offering the first graduate diploma program in biomedical informatics in Peru
Twin digital short period seismic Array Experiment at Stromboli Volcano
Two small arrays composed by short period (1 Hz) digital seismic
stations, with an aperture of approximately 400 meters, were set up at
Stromboli volcano (one at semaforo Labronzo, the other at Ginostra-
Timpone del Fuoco) with the purpose of the spatial location of the high
frequency source of the explosion quakes.
About 75 explosion-quakes were recorded at both arrays, and
constitute the available data base.
We have planned to apply the zero-lag cross-correlation technique to
the whole data set in order to obtain back-azimuth and apparent
slowness of the coherent seismic phases. A preliminary analysis for
both arrays show that the predominant back-azimuth for the first phase
is oriented in the direction of , but not strictly coincident to, the crater
area. Moreover some back-scattered arrivals are quite evident in the
seismogram.INGV - Osservatorio VesuvianoUnpublishedope
Human Mobility in a Continuum Approach
Human mobility is investigated using a continuum approach that allows to
calculate the probability to observe a trip to anyarbitrary 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 fluxesextracted 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.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure
Twin digital short period seismic Array Experiment at Stromboli Volcano
Two small arrays composed by short period (1 Hz) digital seismic
stations, with an aperture of approximately 400 meters, were set up at
Stromboli volcano (one at semaforo Labronzo, the other at Ginostra-
Timpone del Fuoco) with the purpose of the spatial location of the high
frequency source of the explosion quakes.
About 75 explosion-quakes were recorded at both arrays, and
constitute the available data base.
We have planned to apply the zero-lag cross-correlation technique to
the whole data set in order to obtain back-azimuth and apparent
slowness of the coherent seismic phases. A preliminary analysis for
both arrays show that the predominant back-azimuth for the first phase
is oriented in the direction of , but not strictly coincident to, the crater
area. Moreover some back-scattered arrivals are quite evident in the
seismogram
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