Researchers create first large-scale model of human mobility that incorporates human nature | Science News | Scoop.it

The distance between two cities is far less important than the population size in the area surrounding them. The team has now created a model that takes human motives into account rather than simply assuming that a larger city attracts commuters. They then tested their “radiation model” on five types of mobility studies and compared the results to existing data. In each case, the radiation model’s predictions were far more accurate than the gravity model’s, which are sometimes off by an order of magnitude.