Urban Network Resilience through Population Mobility: A Case Study of Nanjing

This study investigates how population mobility shapes the resilience of urban internal network structures through a detailed case study of Nanjing, China.
Using large-scale mobile signaling data from 2019, the research constructs both employment and recreational flow networks among 101 townships and streets. Through complex network analysis and interruption simulation, it evaluates the resilience of intra-urban systems across three dimensions — density, symmetry, and transmissibility.
The findings reveal that while Nanjing’s employment network shows high vulnerability to central-node disruptions, its recreational network demonstrates stronger distributed resilience. The study highlights key townships that act as “bridges” maintaining the city’s functional stability and proposes resilience-oriented planning strategies for enhancing cross-river integration and suburban vitality.

Published in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (2024), this work contributes to bridging human mobility analysis with resilient urban planning frameworks.