Evolving urban allometric scaling law of the COVID-19 epidemic in the United Kingdom
Gang Xu, Siyuan Zhang, Edwin McCulley, Ran Wu, Xinhu Li, Limin Jiao
Infectious diseases depend on intensified social intercourse within large cities, resulting in a super-linear allometric scaling law with city size. But how this scaling relationship changes throughout an evolving pandemic is seldom studied and remains unclear. Here, we investigate allometric scaling laws between cases/deaths and city size and their temporal evolution using daily COVID-19 cases/deaths of cities in the United Kingdom from March 2020 to May 2022. Results indicate that cases exhibit a super-linear scaling pattern with city size, revealing higher morbidity in large cities. Temporally, scaling exponents stabilized at around 1.25 after a rapid increase from less than one and then decreased to one. Scaling exponents of COVID-19 deaths exhibited a comparable trend to cases but with a lag in time and a weaker super-linear relationship. Scaling exponents increased first, then stabilized, and then decreased during each wave. Temporal variations of scaling exponents reveal the spatial diffusion of infectious diseases from large to small cities, whose mechanism needs further exploration.
Year of publication: |
2024
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Published in: |
Journal of urban management. - Amsterdam [u.a.] : Elsevier, ISSN 2589-0360, ZDB-ID 2837330-3. - Vol. 13.2024, 2, p. 308-315
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Subject: | Allometric scaling law | Complex urban system | COVID-19 | Infectious diseases | Urban health | Großbritannien | United Kingdom | Coronavirus | Infektionskrankheit | Infectious disease | Epidemie | Epidemic | Gesundheitspolitik | Health policy | Stadtentwicklung | Urban development | Gesundheitswesen | Health care system | Stadtgröße | City size |
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