Emerging Structures from Artisanal Transports System: An Agent Based Approach

Abstract

Some metropolises in the world don’t have any transport authority; the collective transports are not planned or centralized. This lack of institutionalization of the sector leads to the apparition of alternative travel solutions. They are based on individual initiatives. These transports are called “artisanal”. They have the characteristic to let a great freedom to the vehicle crew about the concrete operation of the transport service. Our aim is to understand how collective transport without any planning can allow daily mobility of several million people in the world. A first part of our research consisted of the identification of the essential elements of the strategy of the vehicle crews. We defined two kinds of operational logic based on field surveys in Brazzaville. The objective of this communication is to think about the influence of the urban context on the adaptation of an artisanal transport system. From the definition of the structure of the network and the repartition of the travel demand, we focus on the efficiency and the emerging structure of the transports. To understand the relation between micro scale elements and emerging spatial structure, we use a methodology based on informatics models. We will present results of several simulations to test the adaptation of artisanal transports in different urban contexts.