CS Forum: Marc Barthelemy
A statistical physics approach to transportation systems
Speaker: Dr. Marc Barthelemy
Speaker affiliation: CEA, Institut de Physique Theorique
Host: Prof. Santo Fortunato
Time: 13:15-14:00 (coffee from 13:00)
Venue: T2 in CS building
A statistical physics approach to transportation systems
Abstract
The recent availability of data about cities and urban systems opens the exciting possibility of a ‘new Science of Cities'. Urban morphology and morphogenesis, activity and residence location choice, mobility, urban sprawling and the evolution of urban networks are just a few of the important processes that can be discussed now from a quantitative point of view. In this talk, I will illustrate this new approach on the case of transportation systems and show how the combination of data, physical arguments and modeling can help in understanding urban systems. I will start by showing how we can extract from mobile phone data useful information about mobility patterns in large cities. In a second part, I will show how revisiting urban economics with a physicist's eye can lead to prediction in agreement with empirical observations. Finally, if time allows, I will end this seminar with a discussion about the multilayer structure of transportation networks.
Bio
Marc Barthelemy is a former student of the Ecole Normale Superieure of Paris. In 1992, he graduated at the University of Paris VI with a thesis in theoretical physics titled "Random walks in random media". After his thesis, Marc Barthelemy focused on disordered systems and their properties. Since 1992, he has held a permanent position at the CEA (Paris) and since 2009 is a senior researcher at the Institute of Theoretical Physics (IPhT) in Saclay and a member of the Center of Social Analysis and Mathematics (CAMS) at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). His interests moved towards applications of statistical physics to complex systems, and he worked on complex networks, theoretical epidemiology, spatial networks, and more recently on quantitative geography and urban economics. Focusing on both data analysis and modeling, Marc Barthelemy is currently working on various aspects of the emerging science of cities.