eprintid: 1901
rev_number: 8
eprint_status: archive
userid: 6
dir: disk0/00/00/19/01
datestamp: 2013-11-12 14:09:37
lastmod: 2014-12-10 14:32:52
status_changed: 2013-11-12 14:09:37
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Cerina, Federica
creators_name: De Leo, Vincenzo
creators_name: Barthélemy, Marc
creators_name: Chessa, Alessandro
creators_id: 
creators_id: 
creators_id: 
creators_id: alessandro.chessa@imtlucca.it
title: Spatial Correlations in Attribute Communities
ispublished: pub
subjects: QC
divisions: EIC
full_text_status: public
abstract: Community detection is an important tool for exploring and classifying the properties of large complex networks and should be of great help for spatial networks. Indeed, in addition to their location, nodes in spatial networks can have attributes such as the language for individuals, or any other socio-economical feature that we would like to identify in communities. We discuss in this paper a crucial aspect which was not considered in previous studies which is the possible existence of correlations between space and attributes. Introducing a simple toy model in which both space and node attributes are considered, we discuss the effect of space-attribute correlations on the results of various community detection methods proposed for spatial networks in this paper and in previous studies. When space is irrelevant, our model is equivalent to the stochastic block model which has been shown to display a detectability-non detectability transition. In the regime where space dominates the link formation process, most methods can fail to recover the communities, an effect which is particularly marked when space-attributes correlations are strong. In this latter case, community detection methods which remove the spatial component of the network can miss a large part of the community structure and can lead to incorrect results.
date: 2012
date_type: published
publication: PloS One
volume: 7
number: 5
publisher: Public Library of Science
pagerange: e37507
id_number: 10.1371/journal.pone.0037507
refereed: TRUE
issn: 1932-6203
official_url: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0037507
citation:   Cerina, Federica and De Leo, Vincenzo and Barthélemy, Marc and Chessa, Alessandro  Spatial Correlations in Attribute Communities.  PloS One, 7 (5).  e37507.  ISSN 1932-6203      (2012)  
document_url: http://eprints.imtlucca.it/1901/1/PloSOne_2012_Chessa.pdf