The identification of crucial spreaders in complex networks by effective gravity model

A complex network is a network that has the characteristics of small world, clustering, and power-law distribution. The discovery of crucial spreaders, as one of the significant research directions in complex networks, is mainly used to identify nodes that play a key role in the structure and function of the network. The gravity model is a special method in identifying influencers. However, it involves an open issue that is how to determine the range of interaction. In addition, the mass is merely represented by degree of nodes in traditional methods, which is also a thought-provoking question. For the sake of solving the above two problems, this paper presents an effective gravity model which is based on the precise radius and value information. The rough truncation radius is accurately calculated. And the value information, which represents the dissemination ability of the node, is modified to mass. In short, the node's influence range and value score are calculated according to the attributes of each node and the interaction of neighbor's nodes in the network. Compared with other similar methods and state-of-the-art measures, the rationality and superiority of our approach are demonstrated through six experiments on eleven real world networks. (c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper proposes an effective gravity model based on precise radius and value information to address the issues of identifying crucial spreaders and representing dissemination ability.