Inspired by the social network, the influence network has been proved to be a powerful tool to analyze the influence propagation within a group of entities. An introduction of the topic is given in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2 of the thesis, a brief survey on some major results on the single-layer influence network analysis is presented, and we propose a new multi-layer influence network framework. In Chapters 3 and 4, we give two applications of the single-layer influence network, on social networks and cellular base station interdependency networks. In Chapter 5, we propose a new multi-layer linear threshold influence network to analyze the interdependency of critical infrastructure sectors in metro Atlanta and Florida. Summary and conclusions are presented in Chapter 6.Ph.D
