Dresden 2009 – scientific programme

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AGSOE: Arbeitsgruppe Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

AGSOE 8: Traffic Dynamics, Urban and Regional Systems II

AGSOE 8.4: Talk

Tuesday, March 24, 2009, 11:45–12:15, BAR 205

Universality in Geometric Properties of German Road Networks: Empirical Analysis and Modelling — •Sonic Chan¹, Reik Donner¹, Stefan Lämmer¹, and Dirk Helbing² — ¹TU Dresden, Andreas-Schubert-Str. 23, 01062 Dresden, Germany — ²ETH Zürich, Universitätstr. 41, CH-8092 Zürich

In order to understand the development of urban road networks, we have investigated the structural properties of a variety of German cities. A considerable degree of universality is found in simple geometric features such as the distributions of link lengths, cell areas and cell degrees. In particular, German cities are mainly characterized by perpendicular intersections and splittings of straight roads, deviations of the link angle distributions from the rectangular pattern follow in good approximation stretched exponential distributions.

It is shown that most empirical features of the studied road networks can be surprisingly well reproduced by a simple self-organizing evolving network model. For this purpose, we suggest a two-step procedure with a stochastic generation of new nodes in the presence of a sophisticated interaction potential, which is followed by the establishment of new links according to some deterministic rules. In this model, rectangular patterns naturally emerge due to basic economic considerations. It will be further discussed to which extent similar mechanisms do significantly contribute also in other technological or biological transportation networks.