Jamming transition in air transportation networks

From Lucas Lacasa, Miguel Cea, Massimiliano Zanin:

In this work we present a model of an air transportation traffic system from the complex network modelling viewpoint. In the network, every node corresponds to a given airport, and two nodes are connected by means of flight routes. Each node is weighted according to its load capacity, and links are weighted according to the Euclidean distance that separates each pair of nodes. Local rules describing the behavior of individual nodes in terms of the surrounding flow have been also modelled, and a random network topology has been chosen in a baseline approach. Numerical simulations describing the diffusion of a given number of agents (aircraft) in this network show the onset of a jamming transition that distinguishes an efficient regime with null amount of airport queues and high diffusivity (free phase) and a regime where bottlenecks suddenly take place, leading to a poor aircraft diffusion (congested phase). Fluctuations are maximal around the congestion threshold, suggesting that the transition is critical. We then proceed by exploring the robustness of our results in neutral random topologies by embedding the model in heterogeneous networks. Specifically, we make use of the European air transportation network formed by 858 airports and 11170 flight routes connecting them, which we show to be scale-free. The jamming transition is also observed in this case. These results and methodologies may introduce relevant decision making procedures in order to optimize the air transportation traffic.

The frequency spectrum of the "brownian" states in the middle obey a power law that has been measured in other systems exhibiting flow congestion. Consider the possibility that other behavior modeled as "brownian" is actually the result of self-organized criticality in flow diffusion. Although it's difficult to visualize, it's not entirely unreasonable to consider "brownian" market price signals as flow-limiting nodes in a network of consumption and production. In other words, market price signals are the rate-limiting step in synchronizing flows of cash and goods within an economy.

Very nice, clearly written paper.

Via physics arXiv blog

Comments

[Alina Hsu]

I believe the physics arXiv blog is part of Technology Review, the MIT magazine.