Physicist's approach to public transportation networks: between data processing and statistical physics

TL;DR

This paper explores how applying concepts from statistical physics enhances the analysis of urban public transportation networks, revealing insights into their structure and stability through interdisciplinary methods.

Contribution

It introduces a multidisciplinary approach combining data processing and statistical physics to analyze complex transportation networks.

Findings

Identification of scaling laws in network topology

Insights into network stability and percolation behavior

Application of fractal analysis to urban transit systems

Abstract

In this paper we aim to demonstrate how physical perspective enriches usual statistical analysis when dealing with a complex system of many interacting agents of non-physical origin. To this end, we discuss analysis of urban public transportation networks viewed as complex systems. In such studies, a multi-disciplinary approach is applied by integrating methods in both data processing and statistical physics to investigate the correlation between public transportation network topological features and their operational stability. The studies incorporate concepts of coarse graining and clusterization, universality and scaling, stability and percolation behavior, diffusion and fractal analysis.