September 28, 2012
We present a novel method to reconstruct complex network from partial information. We assume to know the links only for a subset of the nodes and to know some non-topological quantity (fitness) characterising every node. The missing links are generated on the basis of the latter quan- tity according to a fitness model calibrated on the subset of nodes for which links are known. We measure the quality of the reconstruction of several topological properties, such as the network density and the degree distri- bution as a function of the size of the initial subset of nodes. Moreover, we also study the resilience of the network to distress propagation. We first test the method on ensembles of synthetic networks generated with the Exponential Random Graph model which allows to apply common tools from statistical mechanics. We then test it on the empirical case of the World Trade Web. In both cases, we find that a subset of 10 % of nodes is enough to reconstruct the main features of the network along with its resilience with an error of 5%.
Similar papers 1
A major problem in the study of complex socioeconomic systems is represented by privacy issues$-$that can put severe limitations on the amount of accessible information, forcing to build models on the basis of incomplete knowledge. In this paper we investigate a novel method to reconstruct global topological properties of a complex network starting from limited information. This method uses the knowledge of an intrinsic property of the nodes (indicated as fitness), and the nu...
We address a fundamental problem that is systematically encountered when modeling complex systems: the limitedness of the information available. In the case of economic and financial networks, privacy issues severely limit the information that can be accessed and, as a consequence, the possibility of correctly estimating the resilience of these systems to events such as financial shocks, crises and cascade failures. Here we present an innovative method to reconstruct the stru...
A fundamental problem in studying and modeling economic and financial systems is represented by privacy issues, which put severe limitations on the amount of accessible information. Here we introduce a novel, highly nontrivial method to reconstruct the structural properties of complex weighted networks of this kind using only partial information: the total number of nodes and links, and the values of the strength for all nodes. The latter are used as fitness to estimate the u...
October 18, 2016
Reconstructing weighted networks from partial information is necessary in many important circumstances, e.g. for a correct estimation of systemic risk. It has been shown that, in order to achieve an accurate reconstruction, it is crucial to reliably replicate the empirical degree sequence, which is however unknown in many realistic situations. More recently, it has been found that the knowledge of the degree sequence can be replaced by the knowledge of the strength sequence, ...
November 24, 2018
Due to the interconnectedness of financial entities, estimating certain key properties of a complex financial system (e.g. the implied level of systemic risk) requires detailed information about the structure of the underlying network. However, since data about financial linkages are typically subject to confidentiality, network reconstruction techniques become necessary to infer both the presence of connections and their intensity. Recently, several "horse races" have been c...
When studying social, economic and biological systems, one has often access to only limited information about the structure of the underlying networks. An example of paramount importance is provided by financial systems: information on the interconnections between financial institutions is privacy-protected, dramatically reducing the possibility of correctly estimating crucial systemic properties such as the resilience to the propagation of shocks. The need to compensate for ...
Network topology plays a key role in many phenomena, from the spreading of diseases to that of financial crises. Whenever the whole structure of a network is unknown, one must resort to reconstruction methods that identify the least biased ensemble of networks consistent with the partial information available. A challenging case, frequently encountered due to privacy issues in the analysis of interbank flows and Big Data, is when there is only local (node-specific) aggregate ...
In this paper we estimate the propagation of liquidity shocks through interbank markets when the information about the underlying credit network is incomplete. We show that techniques such as Maximum Entropy currently used to reconstruct credit networks severely underestimate the risk of contagion by assuming a trivial (fully connected) topology, a type of network structure which can be very different from the one empirically observed. We propose an efficient message-passing ...
Among the proposed network models, the hidden variable (or good get richer) one is particularly interesting, even if an explicit empirical test of its hypotheses has not yet been performed on a real network. Here we provide the first empirical test of this mechanism on the world trade web, the network defined by the trade relationships between world countries. We find that the power-law distributed gross domestic product can be successfully identified with the hidden variable...
June 6, 2001
Complex networks describe a wide range of systems in nature and society, much quoted examples including the cell, a network of chemicals linked by chemical reactions, or the Internet, a network of routers and computers connected by physical links. While traditionally these systems were modeled as random graphs, it is increasingly recognized that the topology and evolution of real networks is governed by robust organizing principles. Here we review the recent advances in the f...