Excitable London: Street map analysis with Oregonator model

TL;DR

This paper uses a chemical excitable medium model to analyze London's street geometry, revealing how excitation wave propagation varies with excitability and how streets are selectively pruned based on their width and shape.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach of applying the Belousov-Zhabotinsky chemical system to model and analyze urban street networks, demonstrating how excitation dynamics can reveal street importance.

Findings

Wider streets are more likely to be selected by excitation waves.

Decreasing excitability causes pruning of less suitable streets.

The method provides insights into city structure through chemical wave behavior.

Abstract

We explore geometry of London's streets using computational mode of an excitable chemical system, Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) medium. We virtually fill in the streets with a BZ medium and study propagation of excitation waves for a range of excitability parameters, gradual transition from excitable to sub-excitable to non-excitable. We demonstrate a pruning strategy adopted by the medium with decreasing excitability when wider and ballistically appropriate streets are selected. We explain mechanics of streets selection and pruning. The results of the paper will be used in future studies of studying dynamics of cities with living excitable substrates.