DIAGNOSING VULNERABILITY, EMERGENT PHENOMENA, and VOLATILITY in MANMADE NETWORKS

Synthesis of D1.3:Network analysis of interaction between consortium members

and MANMADE forum

Synthesis of D1.3:Network analysis of interaction between consortium members

and MANMADE forum

MANMADEMANMADE

COLB, Budapest 21-22 of January 2008

F. Bono, E. Gutierrez

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The ManMade network

The ManMade networkThe ManMade project is a network of researchers from different institutions participating in the project.

Network AnalysisThe ManMade project’s network is analyzed on the basis of the information retrieved from the project’s web forum.

Data sources for the analysis

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 Forum 

Startup category

Manmade Startup Forum

Original Manmade forum during project startup. All discussion in this forum is

now locked.

Manmade Forum

MANMADE General Topics

WP1 - Project Management

WP2 - Network Collation

WP3 - Mathematical Methods

WP4 - Electricity Networks

WP5 - Dynamics of supply-chain and market volatility of

networks

WP6- Vulnerability of interconnected networks   

Possible social network data sourcesThe web Forum data source (topics ordered according to the project’s work package plan)

Forum activity

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The period considered starts from M1 to M11 (Jan-Nov 2007)

Rate of postings/messages is almost stable (~ 30 per month)

15 active users on the forum (10 inactive users)

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Network Analysis

• K-cores• Cohesiveness• Cliques

Forum Users dataset

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(Private messages and topic posts)

77 Edges

(Registered users)

26 Nodes

Note: size of vertex indicative of traffic to/from a user.

Starting from the first posted message on a given topic, edges are created from the concatenated list of user postings

Combined graph of Users and Topics

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Private messages (user-to-user link).Posts on topics (user-to-topic link).

Edges

Registered users andTopics (Project’s items: tasks, milestones, deliverables).

114 Nodes

Topics activated by DM with no further messages (inactive)

Topics activated by DM with no further messages (inactive)

Isolated usersIsolated users

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Forum Users k-cores

In a social network, groups of individuals bonded with strong links, are indicative of cohesive subgroups that hypothetically interact in a more active way.

k-cores are indicators of cohesiveness within a social network.

Note: the k-core analysis does not consider the number of interactions between users……

Institutional exchanges (posts and messages)

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• Two nodes (QMUL and JRC) have a more intense information flow.

• The other institutions privilege exchanges with the two main nodes, with minor exchanges between them.

…however the weighted k-core interactions between institutions indicate that:

Users and Topics k-cores

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The main k-core is composed of individuals only.

The highest ranked topic is T1.4 (meetings).

Most topics are on the periphery indicating that interaction of these topics amongst users has yet to start.

Users and Topics cliques

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Node size is proportional to the number of exchanged messages

Cliques are found by extracting overlapping triads.

Cliques reveal the overall cohesive structure.

Network evolution

The Forum’s network evolves as people post messages

M1-M11 users exchanged postsM1-M11 users

exchanged posts

Future steps

Add emails messages to the analysis

Add datasets download informationDeliver updates on the ongoing

project’s network

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