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Scaling Laws between Population and Facility Densities Found A research team led by Prof. Ha-Woong Jeong of the Department of Physics, KAIST, has found a positive correlation between facilities and population densities, university authorities said on Tuesday (Sept. 2). The research was conducted in the cooperation with a research team of Prof. Beom-Jun Kim at Sungkyunkwan University. The researchers investigated the ideal relation between the population and the facilities within the framework of an economic mechanism governing microdynamics. In previous studies based on the global optimization of facility positions in minimizing the overall travel distance between people and facilities, the relation between population and facilities should follow a simple law. The new empirical analysis, however, determined that the law is not a fixed value but spreads in a broad range depending on facility types. To explain this discrepancy, the researchers proposed a model based on economic mechanism that mimics the competitive balance between the profit of the facilities and the social opportunity cost for population. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States on Aug. 25.
2009.09.04 View 10412

KAIST, 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea T.042-350-2114 F.042-350-2210(2220)