Network or graph structures are ubiquitous in the study of complex systems.
Often, we are interested in complexity trends of these system as it evolves
under some dynamic. An example might be looking at the complexity of a food web
as species enter an ecosystem via migration or speciation, and leave via
extinction.
In this paper, a complexity measure of networks is proposed based on the {\em
complexity is information content} paradigm. To apply this paradigm to any
object, one must fix two things: a representation language, in which strings of
symbols from some alphabet describe, or stand for the objects being considered;
and a means of determining when two such descriptions refer to the same object.
With these two things set, the information content of an object can be computed
in principle from the number of equivalent descriptions describing a particular
object.
I propose a simple representation language for undirected graphs that can be
encoded as a bitstring, and equivalence is a topological equivalence. I also
present an algorithm for computing the complexity of an arbitrary undirected
network.Comment: Accepted for Australian Conference on Artificial Life (ACAL05). To
appear in Advances in Natural Computation (World Scientific