Modelling the evolution of human trail systems

Dirk Helbing (), Joachim Keltsch and Péter Molnár
Additional contact information
Dirk Helbing: Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Stuttgart
Joachim Keltsch: Science–Computing
Péter Molnár: Center for Theoretical Studies of Physical Systems, Clark Atlanta University

Nature, 1997, vol. 388, issue 6637, 47-50

Abstract: Abstract Many human social phenomena, such as cooperation1,2,3, the growth of settlements4, traffic dynamics5,6,7 and pedestrian movement7,8,9,10, appear to be accessible to mathematical descriptions that invoke self-organization11,12. Here we develop a model of pedestrian motion to explore the evolution of trails in urban green spaces such as parks. Our aim is to address such questions as what the topological structures of these trail systems are13, and whether optimal path systems can be predicted for urban planning. We use an ‘active walker’ model14,15,16,17,18,19 that takes into account pedestrian motion and orientation and the concomitant feedbacks with the surrounding environment. Such models have previously been applied to the study of complex structure formation in physical14,15,16, chemical17 and biological18,19 systems. We find that our model is able to reproduce many of the observed large-scale spatial features of trail systems.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/40353 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:388:y:1997:i:6637:d:10.1038_40353

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/40353

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().