Bridgeness: A Local Index on Edge Significance in Maintaining Global Connectivity

TL;DR

This paper introduces the bridgeness index, a local topological measure that effectively identifies edges crucial for maintaining global connectivity in networks, outperforming content similarity and other structural indices.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel local index called bridgeness that quantifies edge importance for global connectivity, validated through extensive experiments on various networks.

Findings

Bridgeness outperforms content similarity in identifying key edges.

Bridgeness surpasses Jaccard, degree product, and betweenness centrality in effectiveness.

Edges connecting less similar nodes are more significant for global connectivity.

Abstract

Edges in a network can be divided into two kinds according to their different roles: some enhance the locality like the ones inside a cluster while others contribute to the global connectivity like the ones connecting two clusters. A recent study by Onnela et al uncovered the weak ties effects in mobile communication. In this article, we provide complementary results on document networks, that is, the edges connecting less similar nodes in content are more significant in maintaining the global connectivity. We propose an index named bridgeness to quantify the edge significance in maintaining connectivity, which only depends on local information of network topology. We compare the bridgeness with content similarity and some other structural indices according to an edge percolation process. Experimental results on document networks show that the bridgeness outperforms content similarity in characterizing the edge significance. Furthermore, extensive numerical results on disparate networks indicate that the bridgeness is also better than some well-known indices on edge significance, including the Jaccard coefficient, degree product and betweenness centrality.