Identifying and modeling the structural discontinuities of human interactions
The idea of a hierarchical spatial organization of society lies at the core of seminal theories in human geography that have strongly influenced our understanding of social organization. Along the same line, the recent availability of large-scale human mobility and communication data has offered nov...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Nature Publishing Group
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/110111 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6281-0656 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2026-5631 |
| _version_ | 1826216813335150592 |
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| author | H?vel, Philipp Simini, Filippo Vanhoof, Maarten Smoreda, Zbigniew Barab?si, Albert-L?szl? Grauwin, Sebastian Szell, Michael Sobolevsky, Stanislav Ratti, Carlo |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning H?vel, Philipp Simini, Filippo Vanhoof, Maarten Smoreda, Zbigniew Barab?si, Albert-L?szl? Grauwin, Sebastian Szell, Michael Sobolevsky, Stanislav Ratti, Carlo |
| author_sort | H?vel, Philipp |
| collection | MIT |
| description | The idea of a hierarchical spatial organization of society lies at the core of seminal theories in human geography that have strongly influenced our understanding of social organization. Along the same line, the recent availability of large-scale human mobility and communication data has offered novel quantitative insights hinting at a strong geographical confinement of human interactions within neighboring regions, extending to local levels within countries. However, models of human interaction largely ignore this effect. Here, we analyze several country-wide networks of telephone calls - both, mobile and landline - and in either case uncover a systematic decrease of communication induced by borders which we identify as the missing variable in state-of-the-art models. Using this empirical evidence, we propose an alternative modeling framework that naturally stylizes the damping effect of borders. We show that this new notion substantially improves the predictive power of widely used interaction models. This increases our ability to understand, model and predict social activities and to plan the development of infrastructures across multiple scales. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:53:31Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/110111 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:53:31Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1101112022-09-29T22:15:16Z Identifying and modeling the structural discontinuities of human interactions H?vel, Philipp Simini, Filippo Vanhoof, Maarten Smoreda, Zbigniew Barab?si, Albert-L?szl? Grauwin, Sebastian Szell, Michael Sobolevsky, Stanislav Ratti, Carlo Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory Grauwin, Sebastian Szell, Michael Sobolevsky, Stanislav Ratti, Carlo The idea of a hierarchical spatial organization of society lies at the core of seminal theories in human geography that have strongly influenced our understanding of social organization. Along the same line, the recent availability of large-scale human mobility and communication data has offered novel quantitative insights hinting at a strong geographical confinement of human interactions within neighboring regions, extending to local levels within countries. However, models of human interaction largely ignore this effect. Here, we analyze several country-wide networks of telephone calls - both, mobile and landline - and in either case uncover a systematic decrease of communication induced by borders which we identify as the missing variable in state-of-the-art models. Using this empirical evidence, we propose an alternative modeling framework that naturally stylizes the damping effect of borders. We show that this new notion substantially improves the predictive power of widely used interaction models. This increases our ability to understand, model and predict social activities and to plan the development of infrastructures across multiple scales. Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (postdoctoral fellowship) European Commission. Future and Emerging Technologies-Open Project DATASIM (FP7-ICT-270833) 2017-06-21T14:32:50Z 2017-06-21T14:32:50Z 2017-04 2016-08 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 2045-2322 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/110111 Grauwin, Sebastian, Michael Szell, Stanislav Sobolevsky, Philipp Hövel, Filippo Simini, Maarten Vanhoof, Zbigniew Smoreda, Albert-László Barabási, and Carlo Ratti. “Identifying and Modeling the Structural Discontinuities of Human Interactions.” Scientific Reports 7 (April 26, 2017): 46677. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6281-0656 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2026-5631 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep46677 Scientific Reports Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Nature Publishing Group Nature |
| spellingShingle | H?vel, Philipp Simini, Filippo Vanhoof, Maarten Smoreda, Zbigniew Barab?si, Albert-L?szl? Grauwin, Sebastian Szell, Michael Sobolevsky, Stanislav Ratti, Carlo Identifying and modeling the structural discontinuities of human interactions |
| title | Identifying and modeling the structural discontinuities of human interactions |
| title_full | Identifying and modeling the structural discontinuities of human interactions |
| title_fullStr | Identifying and modeling the structural discontinuities of human interactions |
| title_full_unstemmed | Identifying and modeling the structural discontinuities of human interactions |
| title_short | Identifying and modeling the structural discontinuities of human interactions |
| title_sort | identifying and modeling the structural discontinuities of human interactions |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/110111 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6281-0656 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2026-5631 |
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