Eur. Phys. J. B (2015) 88: 117
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2015-60232-1

Regular Article

Crossover from exponential to power-law scaling for human mobility pattern in urban, suburban and rural areas

Department of Physics, National Kaohsiung Normal University, 82446 Kaohsiung, Taiwan

^a e-mail: jslih@nknu.edu.tw

Received: 23 March 2015
Published online: 7 May 2015

Abstract

Empirical analysis on human mobility has caught extensive attentions due to the accumulated human dynamical data and the advance of data mining technique. But the results of related research still have to further investigate on some issues such as spatial scale. In this paper, we explore human mobility in greater Kaohsiung area by using long-term taxicabs’ GPS data. The trip distance in our dataset exhibits exponential decay for short trips and power-law scaling for long trips. We propose an approach to investigate the possible mechanism of the power-law tail. Moreover, we utilize the method of simulation and random relinking trip path to explain the empirical observation. Our results show that the origin of power-law movement distribution may be largely due to the power-law population distribution.