k-Centralities: local approximations of global measures based on shortest paths

A lot of centrality measures have been developed to analyze different aspects of importance. Some of the most popular centrality measures (e.g. betweenness centrality, closeness centrality) are based on the calculation of shortest paths. This characteristic limits the applicability of these measures for larger networks. In this article we elaborate on the idea of bounded-distance shortest paths calculations. We claim criteria for k-centrality measures and we introduce one algorithm for calculating both betweenness and closeness based centralities. We also present normalizations for these measures. We show that k-centrality measures are good approximations for the corresponding centrality measures by achieving a tremendous gain of calculation time and also having linear calculation complexity O(n) for networks with constant average degree. This allows researchers to approximate centrality measures based on shortest paths for networks with millions of nodes or with high frequency in dynamically changing networks.

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