A stochastic model of randomly accelerated walkers for human mobility.

ABSTRACT: Recent studies of human mobility largely focus on displacements patterns and power law fits of empirical long-tailed distributions of distances are usually associated to scale-free superdiffusive random walks called Lévy flights. However, drawing conclusions about a complex system from a fit, without any further knowledge of the underlying dynamics, might lead to erroneous interpretations. Here we show, on the basis of a data set describing the trajectories of 780,000 private vehicles in Italy, that the Lévy flight model cannot explain the behaviour of travel times and speeds. We therefore introduce a class of accelerated random walks, validated by empirical observations, where the velocity changes due to acceleration kicks at random times. Combining this mechanism with an exponentially de

SUBMITTER: Gallotti R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5013551 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature