Detecting overlapping communities of weighted networks via a local algorithm

Identification of communities is significant in understanding the structures and functions of networks. Since some nodes naturally belong to several communities, the study of overlapping communities has attracted increasing attention recently, and many algorithms have been designed to detect overlapping communities. In this paper, an overlapping communities detecting algorithm is proposed whose main strategies are finding an initial partial community from a node with maximal node strength and adding tight nodes to expand the partial community. Seven real-world complex networks and one synthetic network are used to evaluate the algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that the algorithm proposed is efficient for detecting overlapping communities in weighted networks.     

A local fuzzy method based on “p-strong” community for detecting communities in networks

In this paper,we propose a local fuzzy method based on the idea of "p-strong" community to detect the disjoint and overlapping communities in networks.In the method,a refined agglomeration rule is designed for agglomerating nodes into local communities,and the overlapping nodes are detected based on the idea of making each community strong.We propose a contribution coefficient b_v~(ci)to measure the contribution of an overlapping node to each of its belonging communities,and the fuzzy coefficients of the overlapping node can be obtained by normalizing the b_v~(ci) to all its belonging communities.The running time of our method is analyzed and varies linearly with network size.We investigate our method on the computergenerated networks and real networks.The testing results indicate that the accuracy of our method in detecting disjoint communities is higher than those of the existing local methods and our method is efficient for detecting the overlapping nodes with fuzzy coefficients.Furthermore,the local optimizing scheme used in our method allows us to partly solve the resolution problem of the global modularity.     

Detection of node group membership in networks with group overlap

Most networks found in social and biochemical systems have modular structures. An important question prompted by the modularity of these networks is whether nodes can be said to belong to a single group. If they cannot, we would need to consider the role of “overlapping communities.” Despite some efforts in this direction, the problem of detecting overlapping groups remains unsolved because there is neither a formal definition of overlapping community, nor an ensemble of networks with which to test the performance of group detection algorithms when nodes can belong to more than one group. Here, we introduce an ensemble of networks with overlapping groups. We then apply three group identification methods – modularity maximization, k-clique percolation, and modularity-landscape surveying – to these networks. We find that the modularity-landscape surveying method is the only one able to detect heterogeneities in node memberships, and that those heterogeneities are only detectable when the overlap is small. Surprisingly, we find that the k-clique percolation method is unable to detect node membership for the overlapping case.     

A thermal flux-diffusing model for complex networks and its applications in community structure detection

We introduce a thermal flux-diffusing model for complex networks. Based on this model, we propose a physical method to detect the communities in the complex networks. The method allows us to obtain the temperature distribution of nodes in time that scales linearly with the network size. Then, the local community enclosing a given node can be easily detected for the reason that the dense connections in the local communities lead to the temperatures of nodes in the same community being close to each other. The community structure of a network can be recursively detected by randomly choosing the nodes outside the detected local communities. In the experiments, we apply our method to a set of benchmarking networks with known pre-determined community structures. The experiment results show that our method has higher accuracy and precision than most existing globe methods and is better than the other existing local methods in the selection of the initial node. Finally, several real-world networks are investigated.     

Efficient overlapping community detection in huge real-world networks

The detection of overlapping community structure in networks can give insight into the structures and functions of many complex systems. In this paper, we propose a simple but efficient overlapping community detection method for very large real-world networks. Taking a high-quality, non-overlapping partition generated by existing, efficient, non-overlapping community detection methods as input, our method identifies overlapping nodes between each pair of connected non-overlapping communities in turn. Through our analysis on modularity, we deduce that, to become an overlapping node without demolishing modularity, nodes should satisfy a specific condition presented in this paper. The proposed algorithm outputs high quality overlapping communities by efficiently identifying overlapping nodes that satisfy the above condition. Experiments on synthetic and real-world networks show that in most cases our method is better than other algorithms either in the quality of results or the computational performance. In some cases, our method is the only one that can produce overlapping communities in the very large real-world networks used in the experiments.     

基于联合矩阵分解的节点多属性网络社团检测

发现复杂网络中的社团结构在社会网络、生物组织网络和在线网络等复杂网络中具备十分重要的意义. 针对社交媒体网络的社团检测通常需要利用两种信息源: 网络拓扑结构特征和节点属性特征, 丰富的节点内容属性信息为社团检测的增加了灵活性和挑战. 传统方法是要么仅针对这两者信息之一进行单独挖掘, 或者将两者信息得到的社团结果进行线性叠加判决, 不能有效进行信息源的融合. 本文将节点的多维属性特征作为社团划分的一种有效协同学习项进行研究, 将两者信息源进行融合分析, 提出了一种基于联合矩阵分解的节点多属性网络社团检测算法CDJMF, 提高了社团检测的有效性和鲁棒性. 实验表明, 本文所提的方法能够有效利用节点的属性信息指导社团检测, 具备更高的社团划分质量.     

Detecting community structure in complex networks via node similarity

The detection of the community structure in networks is beneficial to understand the network structure and to analyze the network properties. Based on node similarity, a fast and efficient method for detecting community structure is proposed, which discovers the community structure by iteratively incorporating the community containing a node with the communities that contain the nodes with maximum similarity to this node to form a new community. The presented method has low computational complexity because of requiring only the local information of the network, and it does not need any prior knowledge about the communities and its detection results are robust on the selection of the initial node. Some real-world and computer-generated networks are used to evaluate the performance of the presented method. The simulation results demonstrate that this method is efficient to detect community structure in complex networks, and the ZLZ metrics used in the proposed method is the most suitable one among local indices in community detection.     

Detecting overlapping communities by seed community in weighted complex networks

Detection of community structures in the weighted complex networks is significant to understand the network structures and analysis of the network properties. We present a unique algorithm to detect overlapping communities in the weighted complex networks with considerable accuracy. For a given weighted network, all the seed communities are first extracted. Then to each seed community, more community members are absorbed using the absorbing degree function. In addition, our algorithm successfully finds common nodes between communities. The experiments using some real-world networks show that the performance of our algorithm is satisfactory.     

Detecting overlapping communities based on vital nodes in complex networks

Detection of community structures in the complex networks is significant to understand the network structures and analyze the network properties. However, it is still a problem on how to select initial seeds as well as to determine the number of communities. In this paper, we proposed the detecting overlapping communities based on vital nodes algorithm(DOCBVA), an algorithm based on vital nodes and initial seeds to detect overlapping communities. First, through some screening method, we find the vital nodes and then the seed communities through the pretreatment of vital nodes. This process differs from most existing methods, and the speed is faster. Then the seeds will be extended. We also adopt a new parameter of attribution degree to extend the seeds and find the overlapping communities. Finally, the remaining nodes that have not been processed in the first two steps will be reprocessed. The number of communities is likely to change until the end of algorithm. The experimental results using some real-world network data and artificial network data are satisfactory and can prove the superiority of the DOCBVA algorithm.     

Detection of community overlap according to belief propagation and conflict

Most existing methods for detection of community overlap cannot balance efficiency and accuracy for large and densely overlapping networks. To quickly identify overlapping communities for such networks, we propose a new method that uses belief propagation and conflict (PCB) to occupy communities. We first identify triangles with maximal clustering coefficients as seed nodes and sow a new type of belief to the seed nodes. Then the beliefs explore their territory by occupying nodes with high assent ability. The beliefs propagate their strength along the graph to consolidate their territory, and conflict with each other when they encounter the same node simultaneously. Finally, the node membership is judged from the belief vectors. The PCB time complexity is nearly linear and its space complexity is linear. The algorithm was tested in extensive experiments on three real-world social networks and three computer-generated artificial graphs. The experimental results show that PCB is very fast and highly reliable. Tests on real and artificial networks give excellent results compared with three newly proposed overlapping community detection algorithms.     

Error and attack tolerance of synchronization in Hindmarsh–Rose neural networks with community structure

Synchronization is one of the most important features observed in large-scale complex networks of interacting dynamical systems. As is well known, there is a close relation between the network topology and the network synchronizability. Using the coupled Hindmarsh–Rose neurons with community structure as a model network, in this paper we explore how failures of the nodes due to random errors or intentional attacks affect the synchronizability of community networks. The intentional attacks are realized by removing a fraction of the nodes with high values in some centrality measure such as the centralities of degree, eigenvector, betweenness and closeness. According to the master stability function method, we employ the algebraic connectivity of the considered community network as an indicator to examine the network synchronizability. Numerical evidences show that the node failure strategy based on the betweenness centrality has the most influence on the synchronizability of community networks. With this node failure strategy for a given network with a fixed number of communities, we find that the larger the degree of communities, the worse the network synchronizability; however, for a given network with a fixed degree of communities, we observe that the more the number of communities, the better the network synchronizability.     

Overlapping Community Detection Based on Membership Degree Propagation

A community in a complex network refers to a group of nodes that are densely connected internally but with only sparse connections to the outside. Overlapping community structures are ubiquitous in real-world networks, where each node belongs to at least one community. Therefore, overlapping community detection is an important topic in complex network research. This paper proposes an overlapping community detection algorithm based on membership degree propagation that is driven by both global and local information of the node community. In the method, we introduce a concept of membership degree, which not only stores the label information, but also the degrees of the node belonging to the labels. Then the conventional label propagation process could be extended to membership degree propagation, with the results mapped directly to the overlapping community division. Therefore, it obtains the partition result and overlapping node identification simultaneously and greatly reduces the computational time. The proposed algorithm was applied to a synthetic Lancichinetti–Fortunato–Radicchi (LFR) dataset and nine real-world datasets and compared with other up-to-date algorithms. The experimental results show that our proposed algorithm is effective and outperforms the comparison methods on most datasets. Our proposed method significantly improved the accuracy and speed of the overlapping node prediction. It can also substantially alleviate the computational complexity of community structure detection in general.     

Detecting local community structures in complex networks based on local degree central nodes

Detecting local communities in real-world graphs such as large social networks, web graphs, and biological networks has received a great deal of attention because obtaining complete information from a large network is still difficult and unrealistic nowadays. In this paper, we define the term local degree central node whose degree is greater than or equal to the degree of its neighbor nodes. A new method based on the local degree central node to detect the local community is proposed. In our method, the local community is not discovered from the given starting node, but from the local degree central node that is associated with the given starting node. Experiments show that the local central nodes are key nodes of communities in complex networks and the local communities detected by our method have high accuracy. Our algorithm can discover local communities accurately for more nodes and is an effective method to explore community structures of large networks.     

Fuzzy overlapping community detection based on local random walk and multidimensional scaling

A fuzzy overlapping community is an important kind of overlapping community in which each node belongs to each community to different extents. It exists in many real networks but how to identify a fuzzy overlapping community is still a challenging task. In this work, the concept of local random walk and a new distance metric are introduced. Based on the new distance measurement, the dissimilarity index between each node of a network is calculated firstly. Then in order to keep the original node distance as much as possible, the network structure is mapped into low-dimensional space by the multidimensional scaling (MDS). Finally, the fuzzy c$c$-means clustering is employed to find fuzzy communities in a network. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is effective and efficient to identify the fuzzy overlapping communities in both artificial networks and real-world networks.     

一种新的网络传播中最有影响力的节点发现方法

在复杂网络的传播模型研究中, 如何发现最具影响力的传播节点在理论和现实应用中都有重大的意义. 目前的研究一般使用节点的度数、紧密度、介数和K-shell等中心化指标来评价影响力, 这种方法虽然简单, 但是由于它们仅利用了节点自身的内部属性, 因而在评价影响力时精确度并不高, 普遍性适用性较弱.为了解决这个问题, 本文提出了KSC (K-shell and community centrality)指标模型. 此模型不但考虑了节点的内部属性, 而且还综合考虑了节点的外部属性, 例如节点所属的社区等. 然后利用SIR (susceptible-infected-recovered)模型对传播过程进行仿真, 实验证明所提出的方法可以更好地发现最具有影响力的节点, 且可适用于各种复杂网络. 本文为这项具有挑战性研究提供了新的思想和方法. 关键词： 复杂网络 最具影响力的节点 社区划分 中性化测量     

A fast and efficient heuristic algorithm for detecting community structures in complex networks

Community structure is an important property of complex networks. How to detect the communities is significant for understanding the network structure and to analyze the network properties. Many algorithms, such as K-L and GN, have been proposed to detect community structures in complex networks. According to daily experience, a community should have many nodes and connections. Based on these principles and existing researches, a fast and efficient algorithm for detecting community structures in complex networks is proposed in this paper. The key strategy of the algorithm is to mine a node with the closest relations with the community and assign it to this community. Four real-world networks are used to test the performance of the algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that the algorithm proposed is rather efficient for detecting community structures in complex networks.     

Epidemic spreading on networks with overlapping community structure

Many real networks are characterized by overlapping community structures in which vertices may belong to more than one community. In this paper, we propose a network model with overlapping community structure. The analytical and numerical results show that the connectivity distribution of this network follows a power law. We employ this network to investigate the impact of overlapping community structure on susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) epidemic spreading process. The simulation results indicate that significant overlapping community structure results in a major infection prevalence and leads to a peak of the spread velocity in the early stages of the emerging infection.     

Surveying network community structure in the hidden metric space

Most real-world networks from various fields share a universal topological property as community structure. In this paper, we propose a node-similarity based mechanism to explore the formation of modular networks by applying the concept of hidden metric spaces of complex networks. It is demonstrated that network community structure could be formed according to node similarity in the underlying hidden metric space. To clarify this, we generate a set of observed networks using a typical kind of hidden metric space model. By detecting and analyzing corresponding communities both in the observed network and the hidden space, we show that the values of the fitness are rather close, and the assignments of nodes for these two kinds of community structures detected based on the fitness parameter are extremely matching ones. Furthermore, our research also shows that networks with strong clustering tend to display prominent community structures with large values of network modularity and fitness.     

Research on Community Structure in Bus Transport Networks

We abstract the bus transport networks (BTNs) to two kinds of complex networks with space L and space P methods respectively. Using improved community detecting algorithm (PKM agglomerative algorithm), we analyze the community property of two kinds of BTNs graphs. The results show that the BTNs graph described with space L method have obvious community property, but the other kind of BTNs graph described with space P method have not. The reason is that the BTNs graph described with space P method have the intense overlapping community property and general community division algorithms can not identify this kind of community structure. To overcome this problem, we propose a novel community structure called N-depth community and present a corresponding community detecting algorithm, which can detect overlapping community. Applying the novel community structure and detecting algorithm to a BTN evolution model described with space P, whose network property agrees well with real BTNs', we get obvious community property.     

Concentric characterization and classification of complex network nodes: Application to an institutional collaboration network

Differently from theoretical scale-free networks, most real networks present multi-scale behavior, with nodes structured in different types of functional groups and communities. While the majority of approaches for classification of nodes in a complex network has relied on local measurements of the topology/connectivity around each node, valuable information about node functionality can be obtained by concentric (or hierarchical) measurements. This paper extends previous methodologies based on concentric measurements, by studying the possibility of using agglomerative clustering methods, in order to obtain a set of functional groups of nodes, considering particular institutional collaboration network nodes, including various known communities (departments of the University of São Paulo). Among the interesting obtained findings, we emphasize the scale-free nature of the network obtained, as well as identification of different patterns of authorship emerging from different areas (e.g. human and exact sciences). Another interesting result concerns the relatively uniform distribution of hubs along concentric levels, contrariwise to the non-uniform pattern found in theoretical scale-free networks such as the BA model.