David Aldous  (UC Berkeley)

Route Lengths and Optimal Spatial Networks

For a road or rail network on n cities, what is the trade-off between total network length and the efficiency of the network in providing short routes?

For a pair (i,j) of cities, write  r(i,j) = (route-length i to j)/(straight-line distance i to j)  -1.

To make a single summary statistic for network (in)efficiency, neither the maximum nor the average of the r(i,j) seems appropriate; we introduce a third statistic.

Understanding the optimal trade-off between network length and network inefficiency turns out to be surprisingly challenging, both mathematically and algorithmically.


Download presentation files (comming soon)