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reply: Rivers, blood and transportation networks

Nature volume 408, page 160 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

The idea behind our theorem1 is simple. It can be illustrated by using airline travel as an example. Consider a stream of people (blood) leaving London (heart) at a steady rate and fanning out to all parts of the world (body). The number of people leaving London each day and arriving elsewhere at their final destinations (metabolic rate) is denoted by B. Assuming that the people travel along a locally connected network and that the transit time for each local hop is the same (say, 1 day), the number of people in transit at any given time (blood volume) is proportional to B, but with a proportionality constant that is given by the mean number of hops from all the destination cities to London.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International School for Advanced Studies, Via Beirut 2-4, 34014 Trieste, and INFM and the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, 34014, Italy

    Amos Maritan

  2. Dipartimento IMAGE, Universita' di Padova, via Loredan 20, Padova , 35131, Italy

    Andrea Rinaldo

  3. Department of Physics and Center for Materials Physics, 104 Davey Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802, USA

    Jayanth R. Banavar

Authors
  1. Jayanth R. Banavar
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  2. Amos Maritan
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  3. Andrea Rinaldo
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Correspondence to Jayanth R. Banavar.

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Banavar, J., Maritan, A. & Rinaldo, A. reply: Rivers, blood and transportation networks. Nature 408, 160 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35041635

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