From Logistic Networks to Social Networks

Introduction

The omnipresence of networks in economic and social organization makes the very concept of networks a paradigm of the contemporary world. The needs for various services (transport, energy, consumption of manufactured goods, healthcare, information and communication, etc.) involve users in an interlinking of networks, which are themselves made up of so many interlinks of both tangible and intangible flows, within which the consumer-citizen is sometimes the recipient of goods and services from industries, and sometimes are themselves a component of the organization (social networks). In this work, the authors questioned the invariants which unify networks in their diversity, as well as the specificities which differentiate them. This book aims to produce, to a certain extent, a unifying vision of networks and the related analysis, modeling and optimization problems, by proposing a reading grid that distinguishes a generic level, where these systems find a common interpretation, and a specific level, where appropriate study methods are mobilized. The presentation of case studies, deliberately drawn from distant fields, aims to exemplify the rationale behind this book through concrete studies.

This book is written in three parts. Part 1, “Network Variety and Modeling”, offers a comparative analysis of the networks that surround us, and presents the general modeling aspects that prevail in an engineering context. The reader will find in Chapter 1 a review of the diversity ...