Abstract
Influence spread in multi-layer interdependent networks (M-IDN) has been studied in the last few years; however, prior works mostly focused on the spread that is initiated in a single layer of an M-IDN. In real world scenarios, influence spread can happen concurrently among many or all components making up the topology of an M-IDN. This paper investigates the effectiveness of different influence spread strategies in M-IDNs by providing a comprehensive analysis of the time evolution of influence propagation given different initial spreader strategies. For this study we consider a two-layer interdependent network and a general probabilistic threshold influence spread model to evaluate the evolution of influence spread over time. For a given coupling scenario, we tested multiple interdependent topologies, composed of layers A and B, against four cases of initial spreader selection: (1) random initial spreaders in A, (2) random initial spreaders in both A and B, (3) targeted initial spreaders using degree centrality in A, and (4) targeted initial spreaders using degree centrality in both A and B. Our results indicate that the effectiveness of influence spread highly depends on network topologies, the way they are coupled, and our knowledge of the network structure — thus an initial spread starting in only A can be as effective as initial spread starting in both A and B concurrently. Similarly, random initial spread in multiple layers of an interdependent system can be more severe than a comparable initial spread in a single layer. Our results can be easily extended to different types of event propagation in multi-layer interdependent networks such as information/misinformation propagation in online social networks, disease propagation in offline social networks, and failure/attack propagation in cyber-physical systems.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-25-2019
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41109-019-0150-3
Related Content
We provide the source code used to run experiment simulations for the results of this work in a publicly accessible GitHub repository.
Repository Citation
Khamfroush, Hana; Hudson, Nathaniel; Iloo, Samuel; and Naeini, Mahshid R., "Influence Spread in Two-Layer Interdependent Networks: Designed Single-Layer or Random Two-Layer Initial Spreaders?" (2019). Computer Science Faculty Publications. 32.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cs_facpub/32
Included in
Computer Sciences Commons, Digital Communications and Networking Commons, Systems and Communications Commons
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Applied Network Science, v. 4, article no. 40, p. 1-21.
© The Author(s). 2019
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.