Cascading failures in urban traffic systems tied to hidden bottlenecks

Scientists have developed a modeling technique to study urban traffic flows and show that their model can be used to find previously unknown bottlenecks. The model uses a modified form of percolation theory, and the investigators considered the existing road network and population distribution in Shanghai. They generated trips between various population centers, assigning those trips to roads that provided the shortest travel distance, and discovered that a massive cascading failure of the urban transportation system occurred in a sudden and discontinuous fashion.
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