Supernetwork Perspective on Studying the Method of Identifying the Important Urban Transport Hub

Abstract

To overcome the difficulty of complex network theory (CNT) and to meet the requirements of integrated, comprehensive, and networked urban transport hub network system modeling, it can lead to the incomplete depiction of heterogeneity characteristics of urban hub network elements and the loss of internal structure characteristics of the hub, which leads to a large deviation in importance discrimination. First, based on the supernetwork theory (SNT), the SNT model of urban transportation hub is defined and constructed. Second, combined with the actual structure characteristics of the hub and the characteristics of the hub SNT model, the lateral and longitudinal selection indexes of the superedge (SE) are proposed, and based on this, the SE selection index is constructed. Then, from the perspective of the SNT, this paper introduces the method of judging the importance of urban transportation hub by using the SE selection degree. Finally, taking Beijing’s urban transportation hub as the research object, 16 transportation hubs composed of aviation, railway, long-distance passenger transport, urban public transport, and urban rail transit are selected for modeling and importance analysis. The results show that: compared with the node degree identification method of CNT modeling, the identification result of the urban transportation hub importance based on the SE selection degree from the perspective of the SNT has a high degree of coincidence with the actual situation, which can deeply mine the topological structure features that are homogenized due to CNT modeling, and reveal that a single hub has multiple transportation modes and multiple links between hubs and the functional characteristics of two modes of transportation connection. In terms of performance law, the fitting results of importance and selectivity from the perspective of SNT show the significant heavy-tailed distribution and power–law distribution, which are in line with the law of network evolution and development. It is of high theoretical and practical value to verify the importance discrimination method of selectivity as a measure from the perspective of SNT.