Characterization of spatial networks

Understanding the structure and the evolution of spatial networks is crucial for many different fields ranging from urbanism to epidemiology. An important consequence of space on networks is that there is a cost associated to the length of edges which in turn has dramatic effects on their topological structure. Another consequence is that most standard measures for complex networks are irrelevant for this class of graphs and I will review here some of the most interesting and promising measures for characterizing these graphs and their time evolution. In particular, I will illustrate on various real-world examples the simplicity profile, the spatial distribution of the betweenness centrality and, if time allows,  the shape distribution of faces.

Tsuyoshi Murata

Tokyo Institute of Technology

Roger Guimera

Universitat Rovira i Virgili.

Bio. : Marc Barthelemy is a senior researcher at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Saclay (CEA) and a member of the Center of Social Analysis and Mathematics (EHESS). He has worked on applications of statistical physics to complex networks, epidemiology, and more recently, on the characterization and modeling of spatial networks. He is the co-author, with Alain Barrat and Alessandro Vespignani, of Dynamical Processes on Complex Networks (2008) and author of The Structure and Dynamics of Cities (2016) and Morphogenesis of Spatial Networks (2017). Focusing on both data analysis and modeling, he is currently working on various aspects of the emerging science of cities.