Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 5
Structural Analysis of Networks
Guy Melançon and Céline Rozenblat
5.1
Introduction
Discovering patterns in a network, understanding how information flows between
the regions of the network, and being able to locate these regions are central issues
in a number of scientific areas or application domains. Previous chapters encouraged
the use of graph theoretical concepts to capture notions related to geography,
such as
reticularity
(Chap.
5.3
),
reachability
,
accessibility
(Chap.
5.4
)and
cohesion
(Chaps.
5.2
and
5.3
). Such notions actually apply to other fields and, in fact, graph
theory now plays a key role in the study of complex systems. Studying the structure
of a graph can reveal deep insights about the phenomenon it models.
In this chapter, we adopt a more quantitative perspective and introduce a series
of measures used to typify the roles of nodes in a network, ultimately allowing
the location of regions of interest. Notions such as node reachability and group
cohesion will be revisited, and node metrics that can help quantify these notions
will be discussed.
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