The definition of betweenness centrality for weighted directed networks

graph theoryNetwork

According to Wikipedia, the betweenness centrality of a node ${\displaystyle v}$ is given by the expression:
$${\displaystyle g(v)=\sum _{s\neq v\neq t}{\frac {\sigma _{st}(v)}{\sigma _{st}}}}$$
where ${\displaystyle \sigma _{st}}$ is the total number of shortest paths from node ${\displaystyle s}$ to node $t$ and ${\displaystyle \sigma _{st}(v)}$ is the number of those paths that pass through ${\displaystyle v}$.

For weighted networks, Wikipedia shows the node's strength as:
$${\displaystyle s_{i}=\sum _{j=1}^{N}a_{ij}w_{ij}}$$
With ${\displaystyle a_{ij}}$ and ${\displaystyle w_{ij}}$ being adjacency and weight matrices between nodes $i$ and $j$, respectively. I don't know if this is the definition of betweenness centrality for weighted directed networks.

Best Answer

There is no exclusively correct definition of the weighted betweenness centrality (or in fact any other complex network measure). The reason for this is that you do not care about the betweenness centrality per se, but the properties of your (usually empirical) network it reflects. And what definition fits your network best is something you can and must decide based on what makes sense given how you determined edges, weights, etc.

To give a particular example, you can define the length of a weighted path as the inverse of its weight, i.e., $l_{ij} = \frac{1}{w_{ij}}$, but another monotonically falling function may be more appropriate for your setup.

That being said, I recommend to stick to common terminology and only call something betweenness that reflects the basic idea of existing betweennesses, namely the number of shortest paths going through a node. In your case, $s_i$ is best called the node’s strength and has nothing to do with any concept of betweenness.

Related Question