arXiv subjects

Dominik E. Reusser

Publications and source records attributed to Dominik E. Reusser.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2015

Cities as nuclei of sustainability?

We have assembled CO2 emission figures from collections of urban GHG emission estimates published in peer reviewed journals or reports from research institutes and non-governmental organizations. Analyzing the scaling with population size we find that the exponent is development dependent with a transition from super- to sub-linear scaling. From the climate change mitigation point of view, the results suggest that urbanization is desirable in developed countries and should be avoided in developing ones. Further, we compare this analysis with a second scaling relation, namely the fundamental allometry between city population and area, and propose that density might be the decisive quantity. Last, we derive the theoretical country-wide urban emissions by integration and obtain a dependence on the size of the largest city.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2014

The size distribution, scaling properties and spatial organization of urban clusters: a global and regional perspective

Human development has far-reaching impacts on the surface of the globe. The transformation of natural land cover occurs in different forms and urban growth is one of the most eminent transformative processes. We analyze global land cover data and extract cities as defined by maximally connected urban clusters. The analysis of the city size distribution for all cities on the globe confirms Zipf's law. Moreover, by investigating the percolation properties of the clustering of urban areas we assess the closeness to criticality for various countries. At the critical thresholds, the urban land cover of the countries undergoes a transition from separated clusters to a gigantic component on the country scale. We study the Zipf-exponents as a function of the closeness to percolation and find a systematic decrease with increasing scale, which could be the reason for deviating exponents reported in literature. Moreover, we investigate the average size of the clusters as a function of the proximity to percolation and find country specific behavior. By relating the standard deviation and the average of cluster sizes -- analogous to Taylor's law -- we suggest an alternative way to identify the percolation transition. We calculate spatial correlations of the urban land cover and find long-range correlations. Finally, by relating the areas of cities with population figures we address the global aspect of the allometry of cities, finding an exponent $δ\approx 0.85$, i.e. large cities have lower densities.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2013

Characterizing the development of sectoral Gross Domestic Product composition

We consider the sectoral composition of a country's GDP, i.e. the partitioning into agrarian, industrial, and service sectors. Exploring a simple system of differential equations we characterize the transfer of GDP shares between the sectors in the course of economic development. The model fits for the majority of countries providing 4 country-specific parameters. Relating the agrarian with the industrial sector, a data collapse over all countries and all years supports the applicability of our approach. Depending on the parameter ranges, country development exhibits different transfer properties. Most countries follow 3 of 8 characteristic paths. The types are not random but show distinct geographic and development patterns.

q-fin.GN↗