Slime mould imitation of Belgian transport networks: redundancy, bio-essential motorways, and dissolution

TL;DR

This study uses slime mould Physarum polycephalum to simulate and analyze Belgium's transport network, comparing its efficiency and structure to the actual motorway system to explore bio-inspired network design.

Contribution

It introduces a novel bio-inspired approach to model and evaluate transportation networks using slime mould growth patterns in the context of Belgium.

Findings

Slime mould networks closely resemble Belgium's motorway network.

Bio-inspired networks demonstrate comparable efficiency to human-made systems.

The approach offers insights into redundancy and robustness of transport networks.

Abstract

Belgium is amongst few artificial countries, established on purpose, when Dutch and French speaking parts were joined in a single unit. This makes Belgium a particularly interesting testbed for studying bio-inspired techniques for simulation and analysis of vehicular transport networks. We imitate growth and formation of a transport network between major urban areas in Belgium using the acellular slime mould Physarum polycephalum. We represent the urban areas with the sources of nutrients. The slime mould spans the sources of nutrients with a network of protoplasmic tubes. The protoplasmic tubes represent the motorways. In an experimental laboratory analysis we compare the motorway network approximated by P. polycephalum and the man-made motorway network of Belgium. We evaluate the efficiency of the slime mould network and the motorway network using proximity graphs.