Fast incremental community detection on dynamic graphs

Abstract

Community detection, or graph clustering, is the problem of finding dense groups in a graph. This is important for a variety of applications, from social network analysis to biological interactions. While most work in community detection has focused on static graphs, real data is usually dynamic, changing over time. We present a new algorithm for dynamic community detection that incrementally updates clusters when the graph changes. The method is based on a greedy, modularity maximizing static approach and stores the history of merges in order to backtrack. On synthetic graph tests with known ground truth clusters, it can detect a variety of structural community changes for both small and large batches of edge updates.