BIO-DEVELOPMENT OF MOTORWAY NETWORK IN THE NETHERLANDS: A SLIME MOULD APPROACH

Andrew Adamatzky, Michael Lees and Peter Sloot
Additional contact information
Andrew Adamatzky: University of the West of England, Bristol BS16 1QY, United Kingdom
Michael Lees: Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Peter Sloot: University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 2013, vol. 16, issue 02n03, 1-28

Abstract: Plasmodium of a cellular slime mouldPhysarum polycephalumis a very large eukaryotic microbe visible to the unaided eye. During its foraging behavior the plasmodium spans sources of nutrients with a network of protoplasmic tubes. In this paper we attempt to address the following question: Is slime mould capable of computing transport networks? By assuming the sources of nutrients are cities and protoplasmic tubes connecting the sources are motorways, how well does the plasmodium approximate existing motorway networks? We take the Netherlands as a case study for bio-development of motorways, while it has the most dense motorway network in Europe, current demand is rapidly approaching the upper limits of existing capacity. We represent twenty major cities with oat flakes, place plasmodium in Amsterdam and record how the plasmodium spreads between oat flakes via the protoplasmic tubes. First we analyze slime-mould-built and man-built transport networks in a framework of proximity graphs to investigate if the slime mould is capable of computing existing networks. We then go on to investigate if the slime mould is able calculate or adapt the network through imitating restructuring of the transport network as a response to potential localized flooding of the Netherlands.

Keywords: Bio-inspired computing; Physarum polycephalum; pattern formation; The Netherlands motorways; road planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219525912500348
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:wsi:acsxxx:v:16:y:2013:i:02n03:n:s0219525912500348

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0219525912500348

Access Statistics for this article

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) is currently edited by Frank Schweitzer

More articles in Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().