STNA: Spatio-Temporal Network Analysis

 
 

MOTIVATION

  1. Networks are all around us.  Your circle of friends; the route you take to work; cars on the road; tiny neurons firing inside your brain; ecological systems.  Understanding how elements within these networks interact has fascinated scientists for decades, with pivotal results such as 6-degrees of separation [Milgram ’66], Small World Networks [Watts ’98], finding important central nodes [Freeman ’73] to name just a few, having application to easing road congestion, enhancing computer systems and understanding human social processes.


  3. However, all such analysis has concentrates on static analysis, or in other words, assuming that all relationships between nodes appear at the same time and at the same place.  This project is interested in utilising the importance of both space and time in such analysis. We aim to investigate how these additional dimensions influence the structural properties and the dynamic behavior of networks. From the temporal point of view, we develop new metrics upon a time-varying model of a network which can be thought of as a set of snapshots of the network state. From the spatial point of view, we study how the nodes of a network can be placed in a metric space and how distance affects the pattern of connections among them.


  5. This new approach provides fascinating new directions for the development of new applications and new systems on online social networks and on mobile systems and for a better understanding of social processes such as influence, trust and information spreading.


PEOPLE

  1. Dr. Cecilia Mascolo (Project Lead)

  2. Dr. Mirco Musolesi

  3. Dr. Vito Latora

  4. Mr. Salvatore Scellato

  5. Dr. John Tang


MEDIA COVERAGE

  1. Placebook? Hang-outs could predict new online friends

  2. Reuters , 05 Aug 2011

  3. White Worm Could Stop Bluetooth Viruses

  4. MIT Technology Review, 08 Dec 2010

  5. For Protection from Bluetooth Viruses, Turn to the White Worm

  6. Gearfuse, 15 Dec 2010


PRE-PRINTS

  1. Components in Time-Varying Graphs

  2. Vincenzo Nicosia, John Tang, Mirco Musolesi, Giovanni Russo, Cecilia Mascolo, Vito Latora

  3. arXiv:1012.0726

  4. [PDF]


    5. PUBLICATIONS

    1. Exploiting Place Features in Link Prediction on Location-based Social Networks

    2. Salvatore Scellato, Anastasios Noulas, Cecilia Mascolo

    3. In Proceedings of 17th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD 2011). San Diego, USA. August 2011.

    4. [PDF]

    5. Socio-spatial Properties of Online Location-based Social Networks

    6. Salvatore Scellato, Anastasios Noulas, Renaud Lambiotte, Cecilia Mascolo

    7. In Proceedings of Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2011). Barcelona, Spain, July 2011.

    8. [PDF]

    9. Exploiting Temporal Complex Network Metrics in Mobile Malware Containment

    10. John Tang, Cecilia Mascolo, Mirco Musolesi, Vito Latora

    11. In Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WOWMOM2011). Lucca, Italy. June 2011. arXiv:1012.0726

    12. [PDF]

    13. Track Globally, Deliver Locally: Improving Content Delivery Networks by Tracking Geographic Social Cascades

    14. Salvatore Scellato, Cecilia Mascolo, Mirco Musolesi, Jon Crowcroft

    15. In Proceedings of 20th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2011). Hyderabad, March 2011.

    16. [PDF]

    17. Distance Matters: Geo-social Metrics for Online Social Network

    18. Salvatore Scellato, Mirco Musolesi, Cecilia Mascolo, Vito Latora

    19. In Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Online Social Networks (WOSN 2010). Co-located with USENIX 2010. Boston, MA. June 2010.

    20. [PDF]

    21. Small World Behavior in Time-Varying Graphs

    22. John Tang, Salvatore Scellato, Mirco Musolesi, Cecilia Mascolo, Vito Latora

    23. Physical Review E, Vol. 81 (5), 055101, May 2010. Copyright by the American Physical Society arXiv:0909.1712

    24. [PDF]

    25. Analysing Information Flows and Key Mediators through Temporal Centrality Metrics

    26. John Tang, Mirco Musolesi, Cecilia Mascolo, Vito Latora, Vincenzo Nicosia

    27. In Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Workshop on Social Networks Systems (SNS10).

    28. Paris, France. Apr 2010

    29. [PDF] [BIB]

    30. Characterising Temporal Distance and Reachability in Mobile and Online Social Networks

    31. John Tang, Mirco Musolesi, Cecilia Mascolo, Vito Latora

    32. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review (CCR).  January 2010.

    33. [PDF] [BIB]

    34. Temporal Distance Metrics for Social Network Analysis

    35. John Tang, Mirco Musolesi, Cecilia Mascolo, Vito Latora

    36. In Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Online Social Networks (WOSN09). Barcelona, Spain. August 2009.

    37. [PDF] [BIB]