Analyzing and modeling real-world phenomena with complex networks: a survey of applications

Abstract

The success of new scientific areas can be assessed by their potential in contributing to new theoretical approaches and in applications to real-world problems. Complex networks have fared extremely well in both of these aspects, with their sound theoretical basis being developed over the years and with a variety of applications. In this survey, we analyze the applications of complex networks to real-world problems and data, with emphasis in representation, analysis and modeling. A diversity of phenomena are surveyed, which may be classified into no less than 11 areas, providing a clear indication of the impact of the field of complex networks.

PACS::

• 89.75.Fb Structures and organization in complex systems
• 02.10.Ox Combinatorics
• graph theory
• 89.75. He Networks and genealogical trees
• 89.75.Da Systems obeying scaling laws
• 89.75.Kd Patterns

Keywords:

• complex networks
• complex system
• network analysis
• network theory
• collective phenomena

Notes

KEGG: http://www.genome.jp/kegg.

EcoCyc: http://ecocyc.org/.

http://navigators.com/isp.html

http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505596.

http://www.cmu.edu/joss.

http://www.secondlife.com.

For an extensive list of social networking websites access http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites.

http://us.imdb.com.

http://www.orgnet.com/hijackers.html.

http://www.trackingthethreat.com and http://www.globalsecurity.org.

http://www.census.gov.

http://www.gleamviz.org.

Data collected from http://www.intracen.org/menus/countries.htm. and http://www.tswoam.co.uk/world.

http://www.scecdc.scec.org/catalogs.html.

In graph theory a network is a directed graph (digraph) with nonnegative capacities associated with each edge and distinguished source and sink vertices 579. In this work, the terms graph and network will be used interchangeably.