Discerning electricity consumption patterns from urban allometric scaling

Abstract

Allometric scaling relations are characteristic of all living organisms. Metabolic and heart rates, lifespan and many other physiological properties vary with body mass in systematic and interrelated ways, which usually take the form of a power law. Scaling laws have been recently observed also in the metabolic rate of a particular kind of living system: the city. Scaling exponents of urban indicators present a remarkable variability, mainly associated with fundamentally different underlying dynamics. In this paper allometric scaling is used to detect dissimilar behaviors in one particularly important urban indicator: electricity consumption. Different scaling relations between electricity consumption and economical and social sectors found in southern Spain region of Andaluc´ıa, indicate variability in these sectors’ basal energy consumption processes. The usefulness of these findings for urban modeling is finally outlined and some practical implications are suggested.