A universal model for mobility and migration patterns
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Gonzalez_A universal model.pdf
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Author(s)
Simini, Filippo
Gonzalez, Marta C.
Maritan, Amos
Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo
Date Issued
February 2012
Journal
Nature
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Simini, Filippo et al. “A Universal Model for Mobility and Migration Patterns.” Nature 484.7392 (2012): 96–100.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Introduced in its contemporary form in 1946 (ref. 1), but with roots that go back to the eighteenth century2, the gravity law1, 3, 4 is the prevailing framework with which to predict population movement3, 5, 6, cargo shipping volume7 and inter-city phone calls8, 9, as well as bilateral trade flows between nations10. 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 the phenomena affected by mobility and transport processes11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10856
