Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 215, 5-21 (2013)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2013-01711-9

Review

Modelling the air transport with complex networks: A short review

¹ Innaxis Foundation & Research Institute, José Ortega y Gasset 20, 28006 Madrid, Spain
² Centre for Biomedical Technology, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Pozuelo de Alarcón, 28223 Madrid, Spain
³ Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Departamento de Engenharia Electrotécnica, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
⁴ Scuola Normale Superiore, Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, 56126 Pisa, Italy
⁵ Dipartimento di Fisica, viale delle Scienze, 90128 Palermo, Italy
⁶ Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA

^a e-mail: mzanin@innaxis.org
^b e-mail: fabrizio.lillo@sns.it

Received: 22 October 2012
Revised: 29 November 2012
Published online: 29 January 2013

Abstract

Air transport is a key infrastructure of modern societies. In this paper we review some recent approaches to air transport, which make extensive use of theory of complex networks. We discuss possible networks that can be defined for the air transport and we focus our attention to networks of airports connected by flights. We review several papers investigating the topology of these networks and their dynamics for time scales ranging from years to intraday intervals, and consider also the resilience properties of air networks to extreme events. Finally we discuss the results of some recent papers investigating the dynamics on air transport network, with emphasis on passengers traveling in the network and epidemic spreading.