A Survey on Centrality Metrics and Their Network Resilience Analysis

Abstract

Centrality metrics have been studied in the network science research. They have been used in various networks, such as communication, social, biological, geographic, or contact networks under different disciplines. In particular, centrality metrics have been used in order to study and analyze targeted attack behaviors and investigated their effect on network resilience. Although a rich volume of centrality metrics has been developed from 1940s, only some centrality metrics (e.g., degree, betweenness, or cluster coefficient) have been commonly in use. This paper aims to introduce various existing centrality metrics and discusses their applicabilities in various networks. In addition, we conducted extensive simulation study in order to demonstrate and analyze the network resilience of targeted attacks using the surveyed centrality metrics under four real network topologies. We also discussed algorithmic complexity of centrality metrics surveyed in this work. Through the extensive experiments and discussions of the surveyed centrality metrics, we encourage their use in solving various computing and engineering problems in networks.

Keywords

• Centrality
• networks
• influence
• importance
• attacks
• network resilience