City logistics networks based on online freight orders in China

The development of logistics accelerates the transportation process, which in turn increases the exchanging efficiency between cities. To understand such exchanging interactions among cities, we build a city logistics network based on a unique data set, which contains millions of online freight orders spanning a period of one year. It is found that this network exhibits a disassortative configuration and its link weight (respectively, node strength) follows a Weibull (an exponential) distribution. We also find that the hierarchical structure of the city logistics network is highly consistent with the strategic layout of constructing modern comprehensive transportation system plan in China's "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan". Furthermore, it is observed that the cities with high Gross Domestic Product (GDP) have high centrality in the city logistics network and the logistics flows between two cities are proportional to the product of their GDPs. Our results not only uncover the topological and hierarchical structure of the city logistics network in China, but also provide an understanding of the structural shaping force on the growth of city logistics network.