Physics – Physics and Society
Scientific paper
2011-12-06
Physics
Physics and Society
8 pages, 5 figures
Scientific paper
Despite the recent availability of large data sets on human movements, a full understanding of the rules governing motion within social systems is still missing, due to incomplete information on the socio-economic factors and to often limited spatio-temporal resolutions. Here we study an entire society of individuals, the players of an online-game, with complete information on their movements in a network-shaped universe and on their social and economic interactions. Such a "socio-economic laboratory" allows to unveil the intricate interplay of spatial constraints, social and economic factors, and patterns of mobility. We find that the motion of individuals is not only constrained by physical distances, but also strongly shaped by the presence of socio-economic areas. These regions can be recovered perfectly by community detection methods solely based on the measured human dynamics. Moreover, we uncover that long-term memory in the time-order of visited locations is the essential ingredient for modeling the trajectories.
Latora Vito
Petri Giovanni
Sinatra Roberta
Szell Michael
Thurner Stefan
No associations
LandOfFree
Understanding mobility in a social petri dish does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Understanding mobility in a social petri dish, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Understanding mobility in a social petri dish will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-380853