3,699 research outputs found
Multilayer Networks
In most natural and engineered systems, a set of entities interact with each
other in complicated patterns that can encompass multiple types of
relationships, change in time, and include other types of complications. Such
systems include multiple subsystems and layers of connectivity, and it is
important to take such "multilayer" features into account to try to improve our
understanding of complex systems. Consequently, it is necessary to generalize
"traditional" network theory by developing (and validating) a framework and
associated tools to study multilayer systems in a comprehensive fashion. The
origins of such efforts date back several decades and arose in multiple
disciplines, and now the study of multilayer networks has become one of the
most important directions in network science. In this paper, we discuss the
history of multilayer networks (and related concepts) and review the exploding
body of work on such networks. To unify the disparate terminology in the large
body of recent work, we discuss a general framework for multilayer networks,
construct a dictionary of terminology to relate the numerous existing concepts
to each other, and provide a thorough discussion that compares, contrasts, and
translates between related notions such as multilayer networks, multiplex
networks, interdependent networks, networks of networks, and many others. We
also survey and discuss existing data sets that can be represented as
multilayer networks. We review attempts to generalize single-layer-network
diagnostics to multilayer networks. We also discuss the rapidly expanding
research on multilayer-network models and notions like community structure,
connected components, tensor decompositions, and various types of dynamical
processes on multilayer networks. We conclude with a summary and an outlook.Comment: Working paper; 59 pages, 8 figure
A framework for the construction of generative models for mesoscale structure in multilayer networks
Multilayer networks allow one to represent diverse and coupled connectivity patterns—such as time-dependence, multiple subsystems, or both—that arise in many applications and which are difficult or awkward to incorporate into standard network representations. In the study of multilayer networks, it is important to investigate mesoscale (i.e., intermediate-scale) structures, such as dense sets of nodes known as communities, to discover network features that are not apparent at the microscale or the macroscale. The ill-defined nature of mesoscale structure and its ubiquity in empirical networks make it crucial to develop generative models that can produce the features that one encounters in empirical networks. Key purposes of such models include generating synthetic networks with empirical properties of interest, benchmarking mesoscale-detection methods and algorithms, and inferring structure in empirical multilayer networks. In this paper, we introduce a framework for the construction of generative models for mesoscale structures in multilayer networks. Our framework provides a standardized set of generative models, together with an associated set of principles from which they are derived, for studies of mesoscale structures in multilayer networks. It unifies and generalizes many existing models for mesoscale structures in fully ordered (e.g., temporal) and unordered (e.g., multiplex) multilayer networks. One can also use it to construct generative models for mesoscale structures in partially ordered multilayer networks (e.g., networks that are both temporal and multiplex). Our framework has the ability to produce many features of empirical multilayer networks, and it explicitly incorporates a user-specified dependency structure between layers. We discuss the parameters and properties of our framework, and we illustrate examples of its use with benchmark models for community-detection methods and algorithms in multilayer networks
Constrained information flows in temporal networks reveal intermittent communities
Many real-world networks represent dynamic systems with interactions that
change over time, often in uncoordinated ways and at irregular intervals. For
example, university students connect in intermittent groups that repeatedly
form and dissolve based on multiple factors, including their lectures,
interests, and friends. Such dynamic systems can be represented as multilayer
networks where each layer represents a snapshot of the temporal network. In
this representation, it is crucial that the links between layers accurately
capture real dependencies between those layers. Often, however, these
dependencies are unknown. Therefore, current methods connect layers based on
simplistic assumptions that do not capture node-level layer dependencies. For
example, connecting every node to itself in other layers with the same weight
can wipe out dependencies between intermittent groups, making it difficult or
even impossible to identify them. In this paper, we present a principled
approach to estimating node-level layer dependencies based on the network
structure within each layer. We implement our node-level coupling method in the
community detection framework Infomap and demonstrate its performance compared
to current methods on synthetic and real temporal networks. We show that our
approach more effectively constrains information inside multilayer communities
so that Infomap can better recover planted groups in multilayer benchmark
networks that represent multiple modes with different groups and better
identify intermittent communities in real temporal contact networks. These
results suggest that node-level layer coupling can improve the modeling of
information spreading in temporal networks and better capture intermittent
community structure.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, published in PR
Multilayer Networks in a Nutshell
Complex systems are characterized by many interacting units that give rise to
emergent behavior. A particularly advantageous way to study these systems is
through the analysis of the networks that encode the interactions among the
system's constituents. During the last two decades, network science has
provided many insights in natural, social, biological and technological
systems. However, real systems are more often than not interconnected, with
many interdependencies that are not properly captured by single layer networks.
To account for this source of complexity, a more general framework, in which
different networks evolve or interact with each other, is needed. These are
known as multilayer networks. Here we provide an overview of the basic
methodology used to describe multilayer systems as well as of some
representative dynamical processes that take place on top of them. We round off
the review with a summary of several applications in diverse fields of science.Comment: 16 pages and 3 figures. Submitted for publicatio
Principal Patterns on Graphs: Discovering Coherent Structures in Datasets
Graphs are now ubiquitous in almost every field of research. Recently, new
research areas devoted to the analysis of graphs and data associated to their
vertices have emerged. Focusing on dynamical processes, we propose a fast,
robust and scalable framework for retrieving and analyzing recurring patterns
of activity on graphs. Our method relies on a novel type of multilayer graph
that encodes the spreading or propagation of events between successive time
steps. We demonstrate the versatility of our method by applying it on three
different real-world examples. Firstly, we study how rumor spreads on a social
network. Secondly, we reveal congestion patterns of pedestrians in a train
station. Finally, we show how patterns of audio playlists can be used in a
recommender system. In each example, relevant information previously hidden in
the data is extracted in a very efficient manner, emphasizing the scalability
of our method. With a parallel implementation scaling linearly with the size of
the dataset, our framework easily handles millions of nodes on a single
commodity server
Community Detection and Improved Detectability in Multiplex Networks
We investigate the widely encountered problem of detecting communities in
multiplex networks, such as social networks, with an unknown arbitrary
heterogeneous structure. To improve detectability, we propose a generative
model that leverages the multiplicity of a single community in multiple layers,
with no prior assumption on the relation of communities among different layers.
Our model relies on a novel idea of incorporating a large set of generic
localized community label constraints across the layers, in conjunction with
the celebrated Stochastic Block Model (SBM) in each layer. Accordingly, we
build a probabilistic graphical model over the entire multiplex network by
treating the constraints as Bayesian priors. We mathematically prove that these
constraints/priors promote existence of identical communities across layers
without introducing further correlation between individual communities. The
constraints are further tailored to render a sparse graphical model and the
numerically efficient Belief Propagation algorithm is subsequently employed. We
further demonstrate by numerical experiments that in the presence of consistent
communities between different layers, consistent communities are matched, and
the detectability is improved over a single layer. We compare our model with a
"correlated model" which exploits the prior knowledge of community correlation
between layers. Similar detectability improvement is obtained under such a
correlation, even though our model relies on much milder assumptions than the
correlated model. Our model even shows a better detection performance over a
certain correlation and signal to noise ratio (SNR) range. In the absence of
community correlation, the correlation model naturally fails, while ours
maintains its performance
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