Summary

Point-to-point vs hub-and-spoke. Questions of network design are real and involve many billions of dollars. Yet little is known about optimising design - nearly all work concerns optimising flow assuming a given design. This foundational book tackles optimisation of network structure itself, deriving comprehensible and realistic design principles. With fixed material cost rates, a natural class of models implies the optimality of direct source-destination connections, but considerations of variable load and environmental intrusion then enforce trunking in the optimal design, producing an arterial or hierarchical net. Its determination requires a continuum formulation, which can however be simplified once a discrete structure begins to emerge. Connections are made with the masterly work of Bendsøe and Sigmund on optimal mechanical structures and also with neural, processing and communication networks, including those of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Technical appendices are provided on random graphs and polymer models and on the Klimov index.