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Frontiers of Engineering Reports on Leading-Edge Engineering from the 2005 Symposium (2006) / Chapter Skim
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Complex Networks: Ubiquity, Importance, and Implications
Pages 75-82

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From page 75...
... Gradually, other studies followed describing networks of practical interest in social science, infrastructure analysis, and epidemiology. These studies, which involved researchers from many different disciplines, have led to a paradigm shift -- the complexity of large-scale networks has become the central issue in our understanding, characterization, and modeling (Barabási, 2002; Dorogovstev and Mendes, 2003; Newman, 2003; Pastor-Satorras and Vespignani, 2004)
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From page 76...
... Of course, this is just a rough classification because there are many interrelations and interdependencies among physical infrastructure networks, as well as between physical and digital networks. The Internet, for instance, is a kind of hybrid network in which cyber features are mixed with physical features.
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From page 77...
... In the WWW, for instance, some pages become so popular they are pointed to by thousands of other pages; in general, however, most documents remain practically unknown. The presence of hubs and connectivity ordering have a more dramatic manifestation than was initially thought (Albert and Barabási, 2002; Barabási and Albert, 1999)
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From page 78...
... Thus, attempts to model and understand the origin of observed topological properties of real-world networks require a radical change in perspective to predictions of the large-scale properties and behavior of the system on the basis of dynamic interactions among the constituent units. For this reason, recent activity has been focused on the development of dynamic models for networks.
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From page 79...
... In less complex networks, it is possible to show, on a general basis, that if the rate of spread during an epidemic -- roughly speaking the disease transmission probability -- is below a given threshold value, the epidemic will die out in a very short time. However, in scale-free networks, no matter the spreading rate, there is a finite probability that the infection will cause a major outbreak that pervades the system or will reach a long-lasting steady state.
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From page 80...
... . Cascading failure is typical of complex systems, in which emergent properties imply events and information flow over a wide range of length and time scales.
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From page 81...
... Cam bridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
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Key Terms

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  • constituent units
  • describing networks
  • complex topology
  • understand complex

  • digital networks
  • complex evolving
  • networks concern
  • complex properties
  • social networks

  • complicated networks
  • airport networks
  • complex topological
  • computer networks
  • defines networks

  • care networks
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  • physical infrastructure
  • networks exist
  • networks belonging


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