International Journal of Information and Computer Science Volume 2 Issue 7, November 2013

www.iji-cs.org

Computing and Application on Complex Bus

Network System
Lanhua Zhang*1,2,3, Hua Ma1, Baoliang Sun4,5 , Yujuan Li1, Mei Wang1, Shaowei Xue6
College of Information and Engineering, Taishan Medical University, Taian, China
Institute of Neuroinformatics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
3School of Computer Science and Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
4 Key Lab of cerebral microcirculation in Universities of Shandong, Taishan Medical University, Taian, China
5 Department of Neurology, Affiliated Hospital of Taishan Medical University, Taian, China
6 Center for Cognition and Brain Disorders, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China
1
2

acm_ict@163.com;2mahua73@yeah.net; 3lhzhang@tsmc.edu.cn

*1

Abstract
In order to manage the public bus transport effectively and
provide better decision and service, we present a new view
of constructing the bus transport network has been
presented by abstracting a whole bus line as a node based on
the complex network and graph theory. By modeling the bus
network, the topology structure and adjacency matrix of the
network were obtained. With the theoretical analysis and
experimental test on degree distribution, average path
length (APL) and clustering coefficient, the conclusions that
the bus transport network has the small-world characteristic
of short APL and high clustering coefficient implied that the
current bus transport network is effective with low cost and
bus change number.
Keywords
Bus Transport Network; Complex Network; Degree Distribution;
APL; Clustering Coefficient; Adjacency Matrix; Small World

Introduction
Transport complex network, as a typical complex
network, has received strong attention from the fields
of transport science, the complex network, operation
system and network science. Research of all kinds of
transport networks have been made on theoretical and
empirical study, such as subway network, railway
system, bus system, airline network and street
network From the complex network view combining
with the graph theory, many meaningful results have
been gained in various real-life networks, among
which transport network study is one of the most hot
points.
Bus transport, an important component of the city
dynamics transport system, is an essential basis matter
on the solution about city crowding and blockage has
having positive effect on the bus line optimization,
passenger flow distribution and station planning
solution if the network is effective.

The bus transport network is a typical complex system

and has been extensively studied because of its reality
significance. Based on the complex network theory,
the bus transport has been abstracted to complex
system and focused on the study of the network
topology and characteristics. At home and abroad,
many empirical studies have put the complex network
theory into the application and got good effect. The
empirical network includes 22 public transport
networks in Poland, 14 international citys public
transport networks, as well as the civil cities, Shanghai,
Beijing, Chengdu, Hangzhou and so on. These studies
were mostly objected to the bus transport network.
The source data were the lines and stations. Many of
them constructed the network in the way of P space, L
space and C space .
Despite that all above achievements provided real
data and basis to make deeply research on other cities,
no study to date has attempted to simplify the
complex, i.e., regarding a whole line as a node. In this
paper, a new view has been presented on bus
transport network with complex system theory and
graph theory. In complex network section, the main
topology characteristics of our study were introduced.
In bus transport network section, the emphasis was
put on the method of constructing the bus transport
complex network. Subsequently, the results of the bus
transport complex network on the topology
characteristics were discussed, i.e., degree distribution,
APL, clustering coefficient. At last, the conclusion
about the study were drawn.
Methods
Complex Network Topology Characters
Complex network analysis, and in particular graph
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International Journal of Information and Computer Science Volume 2 Issue 7, November 2013

theory, offers new ways to quantitatively characterize

real-life network characteristics. The network will be
defined based on graph theory as the complex system
composed of node and edge. Complex network
topology can be quantitatively described by a wide
variety of measurements. The numbers and connection
relations of the node and edge reflect the most
important topological characteristics of a complex
network. In the following, the focus was on the main
topology characteristics, i.e., degree distribution, APL
and clustering coefficient.
1) Degree Distribution
By definition, the degree of a node is the number of
the edge incident from itself, i.e., the connections
that link it to the rest of the network. The node
degree represents the importance or the
connectivity of the reality networks, also the
influence of the node on the network, moreover, it
is the most fundamental network measurement
and most other measurements are ultimately
linked to node degree. The average degree of nodes
is the average value of all the node degrees in the
network, depicting the average capability or
connectivity in the network that is very significant
to solve the real-life question, such as the bus
transport network distribution, brain functional
network transport information capability. The
degrees of all the networks nodes form a degree
distribution. Degree distribution P(k) is the
probability that a randomly selected node has
exactly k edges,

p(k ) =

p(k ')

(1)

k =k '

The degree and degree distribution are one of the

most important statistical characteristics to describe
the network type.
2) Averager Path Length
Path length is the minimum number of edges that
must be traversed to go from one node to another.
The geodesic path was represented from node i to
node j as the shortest path length dij, where the
geodesic path is one of the paths connecting two
nodes with minimum length. The average path
length l is defined as the mean geodesic length over
all couples of nodes, which expresses the energy or
other resource requirements of a real-life network.
2
(2)
l=
dij
n (n + 1) i >= j
APL is an important characteristic of complex

128

network, but it is difficult to compute the shortest

path of the large scale complex network whose
node grows exponentially. The index l implies the
connectivity or reliability to the network.
3) Clustering Coefficient
A cluster is formed if the nearest neighbors of a
node are also directly connected to each other in
the connected network. By definition, the
clustering coefficient ci of a node i is the ratio of the
total number of existing edges between all its
nearest neighbors and the number of the network
edges that possibly exist between every couple of
the nodes. The clustering coefficient c of the whole
network is the average of all individual ci that
quantifies the number of connections existing
between the nearest neighbors of a node as a
proportion of the maximum number of possible
connections, i.e., the index c is an important
parameter that measures the group degree and the
clustering capability of the network.
2 ei
(3)
ci =
ki (ki 1)
c=

1 n
ci
n i =1

(4)

In the Eq. (3), ki is the degree of node i, ei is the

number of edges that actually exist.
Network Computing and Modeling
In general, modeling is the most effective and direct
method from real-life network to computing science
research. In this paper, the bus transport network was
modelled by abstracting the node and edge and then
the topology structure was constructed by the relation
of the bus lines so as to form the adjacency matrix that
underlies the computing of the complex network
topology characters.
Most graph theoretical network studies to date have
used symmetrical measures of statistical association or
functional connectivity, such as correlations, coherence
and mutual information, to construct undirected
graphs. According to graph theory, bus transport
network can be described as undirected graph that is
composed of node (i.e., line) linked by edge which
represents the real connections or correlations. Of
course, the directed graph is also can be got referring
to this approach in which the edge is weighted by the
value such as distance, cost or other information in the
reality.
From the complex network to the bus transport
network, the characteristic can be explored using

International Journal of Information and Computer Science Volume 2 Issue 7, November 2013

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graph theory through the following four steps.

1) Definition the Node of the Network
In general, the bus transport network prefers to
defining the station as node. In this paper, a line
was defined as a node from the management view.
Thus, the scale of the network is so small that can
be computed easily and managed simply. Above
all, the adjustment of the bus transport lines is a
huge project for the manager and passengers.
2) Definition the Edge of the Network
In general, the edge of the node can be defined by
the way of P space, L space and C space. In this
paper, an edge was defined if two bus lines has the
intersection whatever one, two or more stations.
Perhaps this definition cannot express the
connectivity degree of the lines thoroughly, but it
can devote to the connected graph and
management requirements.
3) Generate the Adjacency Matrix
For the undirected graph, the adjacency matrix is
generated by compiling all pair-wise correlations
between nodes, which usually produces a binary
adjacency matrix. The matrix is symmetrical
because of the neglect of the weighted value. For
the directed graph, the adjacency matrix is
generated similarly, but it is asymmetrical.
Moreover, to simulate the real-life network better
and more persuasive, the network is guaranteed to
be connected and sparse that close to the reality. So
the threshold is necessary to the directed graph
which determines the sparsity or connection
density of the network.
4) Network Computing
Based on the adjacency matrix, the network
parameters of interest in the bus transport complex
network can be calculated and the results have
been analyzed and compared.

FIG. 1 TOPOLOGY STRUCTURE OF TAIAN BUS TRANSPORT

COMPLEX NETWOTK.

Network Database Structure

For the bus transport network topology structure, the
adjacency matrix was utilized to express the mutual
relation of the bus lines. The definition of the
connection between nodes is binary.
1 if the node i and node j connecting
aij =
0 if the node i and node j not connecting
To avoid the connection of itself, the value of the
diagonal elements was set to be 0. By the experiment
data, there were 32 bus lines (nodes) and 422 edges in
the bus network, the topology structure of the bus
transport network can be expressed by adjacency
matrix A.
X1 X 2 X 3X 32
X1 011
X 2 101
A = X 3 110

X 32 000

0
0
0

Network Simulation and Computing

From the adjacency matrix in combination with the
definition of the topology characters, the degree
distribution (see Fig. 2), APL and clustering coefficient
can be reduced.

Results
Network Topology Structure
By the definition of node and edge, the Taian city,
Shandong province, was selected as the experiment
data. The node is the bus line, and the edge is the
relation about the intersection of two bus lines. On the
basis of the real bus line data, the complex network
has been drawn using matlab software platform (see
Fig. 1).

FIG. 2 DEGREE DISTRIBUTION OF BUS TRANSPORT COMPLEX

NETWORK

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International Journal of Information and Computer Science Volume 2 Issue 7, November 2013

By computing with adjacency matrix, the values of

APL and clustering coefficient are 1.179436 and
0.85383, respectively.
Bus Station Network and Bus Transfer Network
Except the bus line network, the network can be also
simulated by the bus station, that is, the bus station
network and bus transfer network.
On the basis of our researches (Zhang, et al. 2012,
2013a, 2013b), the bus network topology characteristics
of the two network have been learnt, that is, the APL is
13.515 and 5.665, the clustering coefficient is 0.013 and
0.154 respectively. From the simulation, it has been
found that the results of the bus station network and
bus transfer network were not corresponding with the
results of bus line network. On basis of the
optimization of the two networks by setting up
thresholds, the bus station network and bus transport
network got the better results with APL and clustering
coefficient and achieved the corresponding results
with the bus line network, which is with the
characteristics of small world.
Discussion
Network Performance
From the results, the conclusion can be drawn that bus
transport network is the typical small world network
topology characteristic, i.e., short APL and high
clustering coefficient. From the degree distribution, it
is random with simple regular.
From the Fig. 1, it has been well known that the bus
line network is almost the full-connectivity network;
and that the network is a sub-graph of the fullconnectivity. From the graph, it can be concluded that
the network performance in the whole is good for the
travel of the city citizens.
The APL of 1.179436 implies that the exchange
number is small, that is, by this network a passenger
can traverse all the city not more than twice exchange
in average, which is a high performance for the city
managers and passengers without considering other
factors, such as the distance, time.
The clustering coefficient of 0.85383 implies that the
network has some high central hubs. The hub acts
important role in the network for the performance of
the data transmission and signal transmission.
Meanwhile, the high hubs imply the different data
safety and robustness. For the random attack of the
network, the robustness has little effect on the network

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performance. For the directional and specific attack,

the robustness has the devastating destruction.
The degree distribution of the network implies that the
bus lines have different bearing ability. Some bus lines
will be crowded while other bus lines will be no
passengers. It is a good references for managers to
modify the bus lines.
Bus Networks Compared with Other Citys
From the results of Taian City bus transport network,
the small world characteristics have been learnt,
implying that it is effective in the city transport.
Comparing with other city, such as Beijing, Shanghai,
Guangzhou, Jinan, Dalian and so on, it had the similar
results, implying that Taian city has the effective
transport capabilities by the optimization now.
Network Applications and Services
With the results of the network, the conclusion can be
applied to the similar network management.
Combination with the computer network, the network
results can be applied to network theory researches
and some real-life network applications.
In the network theory, our network can be extended
into the weighted network and some network
application interfaces and services can be added.
The weighted network can tell us the distance and
time in our travel for the passengers based on the bus
line complex network, which gives us a more detailed
selections for our travels and the results can be
extended to the city transport network.
The network interfaces are the critical steps for the
management of path selections, travel guidance of the
passengers whateverin the web application or the
information system management. Based on the data
structure and algorithm of the computing, the results
of the network topology characteristics give us the
main references in the travel and network management.
By the network computing and network interfaces, the
potential and extensive services can be provided for
the information management and web services. For
example, the tourist can provided with travel solutions
from time, distance, cost and path; as well as the
online service for the travel management.
Conclusions
In our paper, the whole line is regarded as the node, so
the reality meaning is different from the network

International Journal of Information and Computer Science Volume 2 Issue 7, November 2013

created by the way of P space, L space and C space.

The APL is not the distance in different stations but
the change number of bus that represents the
connectivity and cost of the passenger in a ride. The
value of the APL implies that you can reach any
station not more than two change number average in
the bus transport network, i.e., the cost is little in
economy. From the view of management, the bus
transport network is an effective connective network.
Meanwhile, the high clustering efficient reflects that
the bus network has a high collectivize degree and
implies the good robustness of the network when it
has a lesion or is attacked. Because of the exclusion of
the stations of the network, it is faild to prove that the
results are applicable to every station. That is just what
the manager needs, i.e., from the global not the local,
serving the overall situation, not single station.
In our article, the Taian city bus transport network is
selected as the study object, andresearch has been
done on complex network combing the graph theory.
From a different view of abstracting the node to
construct the network thinking of the management
and cost factors, the focus of the reality question is
placed on bus change number and the bus line is
defined as the node. By the complex network topology
characteristics, it is referred to as that the bus transport
network has the typical characteristics of small world
network with short APL and high clustering
coefficient.
The bus network is a network example of internet
technology and applications. Base on the real-life bus
network, the network theory can be applied to practice,
and by the computing of the network, the more
extensive network application and better network
services are available.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This research was supported by the State Key

Development Program for Basic Research of China
(Grant
No.
2012CB518200),
Natural
Science
Foundation of China (Grant No. 81271275, No.
81070947), Natural Science Foundation of Shandong
(Grant No. ZR2012HZ006), State Accident Prevention
Key Technology of Work Safety Program and Work
Safety Science Technology Development Program of
Shandong (Grant No. LAJK2013-137), Youth
Education Scientific Planning Research Project of
Shandong Province (13AJY033).
The authors thank the staff of Institute of Neuroinformatics in Dalian University of Technology for

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assistance with data collection and colleagues of the

College of Information and Engineering Taishan
Medical University for manuscript comments. Special
thanks to professor Yiyuan Tang and Xiaochen Xu for
suggestions on writing in English, as well as the
anonymous referees for their valuable comments and
suggestions.
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Biography Notes

Letters, 74(2006):560-566.

Lanhua Zhang received the B.Sc. and

M.Sc. degrees from Liaocheng University
and Shandong University, P R China, in
2002 and 2005, respectively. He joined the
College of Information and Engineering,
Mountain Tai Medical University, Taian,
P R China, as a research teacher. He
currently
continues
his
academic
studying as a Doctor scholar at Institute of
Neuroinformatics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian,
P R China. His main research interest is complex network
modelling and algorithm application, computer technology
application and database optimization. He has published
over 30 refereed journal and conference papers on these
topics.

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132

Hua Ma obtained his Bachelor Degree at

School of Computer Science and
Technology, Shandong University, P R
China, in 1996; he received his Master
Degree at School of Computer and
Communication, Lanzhou University of
Technology, P R China, in 2005. His main
research interest is in the area of soft
engineering and medical image analysis and processing. He
has published over 10 papers on these topics and provided
consultancy to various industries.