An efficient approach to representation and simplification of complex networks

This paper describes an efficient approach to representation and analysis of complex networks. Typically, an n node system is represented by an n × n connection matrix. This paper presents a new connection matrix representation scheme that uses three fields; “begin node”, “end node”, and “component id” to represent each node in the network. The proposed approach to connection matrix representation is more concise than the n × n matrix, which is often sparsely populated. This paper also describes network simplification algorithm based on the revised connection matrix. The algorithm when applied to a large system with 55 tie-sets reduced the network to a single tie-set.

► The literature describes several approaches to computing reliability of a complex system, given its tie-sets and cut-sets. ► This paper presented a novel approach to representation and simplification of large networks, prior to computing tie-sets and cut-sets. ► The representation scheme required significantly less storage for the connection matrix. ► The network simplification algorithm when applied to a large network, reduced its tie-set from 55 to 1.