PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Peering into the future: How cities grow

2013-11-20
(Press-News.org) Contact information: Nik Papageorgiou
n.papageorgiou@epfl.ch
41-789-400-620
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Peering into the future: How cities grow Migration patterns into and out of cities are the result of millions of individual decisions, which in turn are affected by thousands of factors like economics, location, politics, security, aesthetics, sentiments and others. However, it is becoming more and more critical for urban planners to be able to predict the rate of growth of a given city in order to better address future issues that arise from increasing urbanization. Publishing in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, researchers from EPFL have discovered a law that could prove fundamental in forecasting the growth of cities.

Cities are often regarded as living organisms, bustling with life and activity. This metaphorical image has a real basis, as migration in and out of cities is a constant, dynamic force. But as cities boom across the world, it is becoming necessary to determine patterns in urban migration. This would allow the prediction of a city's growth in the future, resulting in better planning for administration, design, logistics, and finance. The problem is that human migration over time and space is motivated by a vast range of individual decisions, giving rise to enormously complex data that are not easy to analyze.

An EPFL research team led by Alberto Hernando has discovered what may be universal laws underlying the seemingly random complexity of city movement. The team analyzed data records from the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE), covering a period of 111 years (1900 – 2011) and including a total of 45 million people across 8100 municipalities in Spain. The team was able to view population flow in terms of Brownian motion – random movements of particles inside a medium, like dust floating in air. The exhaustive data available were critical for this innovative approach to work, and they allowed the researchers to uncover laws underlying city growth.

First, the way a city will grow in the future depends heavily on how it grew in the past. Although this seems intuitive, it is not always true since city growth depends on a multitude of factors. By using their model, the team found that it is possible to use past data to predict a city's rate of growth, as long as that city has at least 10,000 inhabitants. They also found that this strong relationship between past and future lasts for approximately 15 years, during which it runs at a constant rate. What this means is that predictions of city growth require at least 15 years' worth of population data for best accuracy.

Second, a city's growth is strongly influenced by how neighboring cities grow. This is especially true when neighboring cities are within 80 Km; as the distance increases, the influence of neighboring cities weakens. This means that predictions of city growth would be challenging for cities like Las Vegas or Perth in Australia, which are large but relatively remote. The relationship between city growth and distance from neighbors means that geography is an important factor when forecasting the future urban sprawl of a particular city.

Following the model's success, Hernando is now interested in extending it to isolate the factors that influence the movement of people. "People move for natural (e.g. disasters, climate change) or non-natural (e.g. volatile economic or social policies, wars) reasons", he says. "Being able to isolate and fit them into a model can help simulate and predict the impact that political or financial decisions can have in a region." In addition, the model can be further applied to forecast the growth of commercial companies by looking at the fluctuations of their value over defined periods of time. "Our long-term goal is to develop a simulation tool including all demographic, social, and economic forces in scene, where virtual copies of cities grow and develop in hypothetical situations, mimicking the response of their real-world counterparts."

### END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

New modelling technique could bypass the need for engineering prototypes

2013-11-20
New modelling technique could bypass the need for engineering prototypes A new modelling technique has been developed that could eliminate the need to build costly prototypes, which are used to test engineering structures such as aeroplanes. The study, ...

Oral drug may improve survival in men with metastatic prostate cancer

2013-11-20
Oral drug may improve survival in men with metastatic prostate cancer DURHAM, N.C. – An investigational prostate cancer treatment slows the disease's progression and may increase survival, especially among men whose cancer has spread to the bones, ...

New case studies link smoking synthetic marijuana with stroke in healthy, young adults

2013-11-20
New case studies link smoking synthetic marijuana with stroke in healthy, young adults University of South Florida neurologists report both patients experienced ischemic strokes soon after smoking the street drug spice Tampa, FL (Nov. 19, ...

Sex of speaker affects listener language processing

2013-11-20
Sex of speaker affects listener language processing LAWRENCE — Whether we process language we hear without regard to anything about the speaker is a longstanding scientific debate. But it wasn't until University of Kansas scientists set up an experiment showing ...

HIV virus spread and evolution studied through computer modeling

2013-11-20
HIV virus spread and evolution studied through computer modeling LOS ALAMOS, N.M., November 19, 2013—Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory are investigating the complex relationships between the spread of the HIV virus in a population (epidemiology) ...

Blacks have less access to cancer specialists, treatment

2013-11-20
Blacks have less access to cancer specialists, treatment UC San Diego study suggests racial inequality leads to higher mortality Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say metastatic colorectal cancer patients of African-American ...

What water looks like to DNA

2013-11-20
What water looks like to DNA New computational method described in the Journal of Chemical Physics allows researchers to predict how biological molecules interact with water WASHINGTON D.C. Nov. 19, 2013 -- A team of biochemists and mathematicians have ...

Stanford study could lead to paradigm shift in organic solar cell research

2013-11-20
Stanford study could lead to paradigm shift in organic solar cell research Organic solar cells have long been touted as lightweight, low-cost alternatives to rigid solar panels made of silicon. Dramatic improvements in the efficiency of organic photovoltaics have ...

New study finds no benefit to selecting dose of blood thinner based on patients' genetic makeup

2013-11-20
New study finds no benefit to selecting dose of blood thinner based on patients' genetic makeup Largest randomized, multi-center controlled trial of gene-based strategy for warfarin dosing also found better outcome for African ...

Edoxaban effective in preventing stroke, reducing bleeding and cardiovascular death in patients with atrial fibrillation

2013-11-20
Edoxaban effective in preventing stroke, reducing bleeding and cardiovascular death in patients with atrial fibrillation Boston, MA – According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 800,000 ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Coral calcification benefits from human hormone injections

New “bone-digesting” cell type discovered in pythons

New study points to Skagerrak as nursery area for the enigmatic Greenland shark

Are sewage spills and coastal winds contributing to airborne microplastics?

Which factors affect the success of popular prescription weight loss drugs in individuals?

Do renter protection policies reduce rental housing discrimination?

Does grading students at earlier ages increase the risk of mental disorders in adolescents?

New artificial intelligence–based test detects early signs of osteoporosis from X-ray images

Can eating a healthy plant-based diet help protect against inflammatory bowel disease?

Do local voting rights affect migrants’ participation in protests?

Mysterious ‘Dark Dwarfs’ may be hiding at the heart of the Milky Way

Real-world data shows teclistamab can benefit many multiple myeloma patients who would have been ineligible for pivotal trial

Scientists reveal how a key inflammatory molecule triggers esophageal muscle contraction

Duration of heat waves accelerating faster than global warming

New mathematical insights into Lagrangian turbulence

Clinical trials reveal promising alternatives to high-toxicity tuberculosis drug

Artificial solar eclipses in space could shed light on Sun

Probing the cosmic Dark Ages from the far side of the Moon

UK hopes to bolster space weather forecasts with Europe's first solar storm monitor

Can one video change a teen's mindset? New study says yes - but there’s a catch

How lakes connect to groundwater critical for resilience to climate change, research finds

Youngest basaltic lunar meteorite fills nearly one billion-year gap in Moon’s volcanic history

Cal Poly Chemistry professor among three U.S. faculty to be honored for contributions to chemistry instruction

Stoichiometric crystal shows promise in quantum memory

Study sheds light on why some prostate tumors are resistant to treatment

Tree pollen reveals 150,000 years of monsoon history—and a warning for Australia’s northern rainfall

Best skin care ingredients revealed in thorough, national review

MicroRNA is awarded an Impact Factor Ranking for 2024

From COVID to cancer, new at-home test spots disease with startling accuracy

Now accepting submissions: Special Collection on Cognitive Aging

[Press-News.org] Peering into the future: How cities grow