Closeness Centrality Algorithms For Multilayer Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces novel algorithms for directly computing closeness centrality in multilayer networks using a decoupling approach, improving efficiency and preserving network structure compared to traditional aggregation methods.

Contribution

It proposes the first algorithms for closeness centrality in MLNs that operate directly on the multilayer structure using heuristics, enabling parallelism and better accuracy.

Findings

Algorithms are more efficient than traditional aggregation methods.

Heuristics provide accurate centrality measures on synthetic and real-world MLNs.

Approach enables parallel computation for large-scale multilayer networks.

Abstract

Centrality measures for simple graphs are well-defined and several main-memory algorithms exist for each. Simple graphs are not adequate for modeling complex data sets with multiple entities and relationships. Multilayer networks (MLNs) have been shown to be better suited, but there are very few algorithms for centrality computation directly on MLNs. They are converted (aggregated or collapsed) to simple graphs using Boolean AND or OR operators to compute centrality, which is not only inefficient but incurs a loss of structure and semantics. In this paper, we propose algorithms that compute closeness centrality on an MLN directly using a novel decoupling-based approach. Individual results of layers (or simple graphs) of an MLN are used and a composition function developed to compute the centrality for the MLN. The challenge is to do this accurately and efficiently. However, since these algorithms do not have complete information of the MLN, computing a global measure such as closeness centrality is a challenge. Hence, these algorithms rely on heuristics derived from intuition. The advantage is that this approach lends itself to parallelism and is more efficient compared to the traditional approach. We present two heuristics for composition and experimentally validate accuracy and efficiency on a large number of synthetic and real-world graphs with diverse characteristics.