Betweenness centrality for temporal multiplexes

• Main Authors: Silvia Zaoli, Piero Mazzarisi, Fabrizio Lillo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Publishing Group 2021-03-01
• Series: Scientific Reports
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-84418-z

Abstract Betweenness centrality quantifies the importance of a vertex for the information flow in a network. The standard betweenness centrality applies to static single-layer networks, but many real world networks are both dynamic and made of several layers. We propose a definition of betweenness centrality for temporal multiplexes. This definition accounts for the topological and temporal structure and for the duration of paths in the determination of the shortest paths. We propose an algorithm to compute the new metric using a mapping to a static graph. We apply the metric to a dataset of $$\sim 20$$ ∼ 20 k European flights and compare the results with those obtained with static or single-layer metrics. The differences in the airports rankings highlight the importance of considering the temporal multiplex structure and an appropriate distance metric.