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

doi:10.1016/j.jum.2024.02.004

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Evolving urban allometric scaling law of the COVID-19 epidemic in the United Kingdom

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Evolving urban allometric scaling law of the COVID-19 epidemic in the United Kingdom

Gang Xu, Siyuan Zhang, Edwin McCulley, Ran Wu, Xinhu Li and Limin Jiao

Journal of urban management, v 13(2), pp 308-315

01 Jun 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jum.2024.02.004

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Abstract

Allometric scaling law

Complex urban system

COVID-19

Infectious diseases

Urban health

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.

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Details

Title: Evolving urban allometric scaling law of the COVID-19 epidemic in the United Kingdom
Creators: Gang Xu - University of Hong Kong
Siyuan Zhang - Wuhan University
Edwin McCulley - Drexel University
Ran Wu - Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Xinhu Li - Hangzhou City University
Limin Jiao - Wuhan University
Publication Details: Journal of urban management, v 13(2), pp 308-315
Publisher: Elsevier B.V
Number of pages: 8
Resource Type: Journal article
Language: English
Academic Unit: Urban Health Collaborative
Web of Science ID: WOS:001298372000001
Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85187334154
Other Identifier: 991022035171804721