A faster algorithm to update betweenness centrality after node alteration

Abstract

Betweenness centrality is widely used as a centrality measure, with applications across several disciplines. It is a measure that quantifies the importance of a vertex based on the vertex’s occurrence on shortest paths in a graph. This is a global measure, and in order to find the betweenness centrality of a node, one is supposed to have complete information about the graph. Most of the algorithms that are used to find betweenness centrality assume the constancy of the graph and are not efficient for dynamic networks. We propose a technique to update betweenness centrality of a graph when nodes are added or deleted. Observed experimentally, for real graphs, our algorithm speeds up the calculation of betweenness centrality from 7 to 412 times in comparison to the currently best-known techniques.