Complex Network Analysis of Indian Railway Zones

TL;DR

This paper models the Indian Railway network as a complex weighted graph, analyzing inter- and intra-zonal connectivity and various network parameters to understand its structure and inform policy decisions.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive complex network analysis of Indian Railway zones, including intra- and inter-zonal connectivity and passenger flow correlations.

Findings

Identification of key zones with high connectivity

Insights into intra-zonal network characteristics

Analysis of network parameters like betweenness and clustering

Abstract

Indian Railway Network has been analyzed on the basis of number of trains directly linking two railway zones. The network has been displayed as a weighted graph where the weights denote the number of trains between the zones. It may be pointed out that each zone is a complex network in itself and may depict different characteristic features. The zonal network therefore can be considered as a network of complex networks. In this paper, self links, in-degree and out-degree of each zone have been computed which provides information about the inter and intra zonal connectivity. Degree passenger correlation which gives an idea about number of trains and passengers originating from a particular zone which might play a role in policy making decisions has also been studied. Some other complex network parameters like betweenness, clustering coefficient and cliques have been obtained to get more insight about the complex Indian zonal network.