An analytical tool to map big data to networks with reduced topologies

Abstract

The topological and dynamical properties of real-world networks have attracted extensive research from a variety of multi-disciplinary fields. They, in fact, model typically big datasets which pose interesting challenges, due to their intrinsic size and complex interactions, as well as the dependencies between their different sub-parts. Therefore, defining networks based on such properties, is unlikely to produce usable information due to their complexity and the data inconsistencies which they typically contain. In this paper, we discuss the evaluation of a method as part of ongoing research which aims to mine data to assess whether their associated networks exhibit properties comparable to well-known structures, namely scale-free, small world and random networks. For this, we will use a large dataset containing information on the seismologic activity recorded by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre. We will show that it provides an accurate, agile, and scalable tool to extract useful information. This further motivates our effort to produce a big data analytics tool which will focus on obtaining in-depth intelligence from both structured and unstructured big datasets. This will ultimately lead to a better understanding and prediction of the properties of the system(s) they model.