[OpenSpending] Network Analysis, Spending and Procurement

[Ronny Patz]

Hi all,

I've been working with network analysis and network visualisation a bit in the past.

For mid-size networks & quick visualisations/analyses, I prefer to work with two free tools, yEd (http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_download.html), sometimes in combination with visone (http://visone.info/html/download.html). The first is more intuitive, the second better in transformation based on data attributed to single nodes & edges, merging parallel edges etc. They have their limits with larger networks though, which is the moment I switch to Gephi.

With yEd, you can take an Excel file in the "edge list" format (quite common for spending data):

[Source], [Sink], [Amount]

e.g.

Town A, Company X, 100000
Town B, Company Y, 20000
Town A, Company Y, 200000
Town B, Company X, 20000

And it will transform it into a network that recognises the same terms as the same node (so the example above would be 4 nodes and 4 edges). I've used that for example here:
http://blog.transparency.org/2010/08/19/visualisation-of-eu-funds-helps-to-fight-corruption-in-the-eu/

For my PhD, I've also worked with network transformations with the help of iGraph, an extension that exists for R, Python, and C (I've been working with R):
http://igraph.sourceforge.net

One function that I needed iGraph for is the transformation of networks with two types of entities (e.g. tendering institutions and recipients, groups/events and members/participants) into single-type networks based on joint affiliation, e.g. transforming a towns-company network into a town-town network where towns become linked when they give money to the same recipient. An example can be found on my private blog (and I've done similar analyses with participation lists (participants->committee meetings) for my doctoral research):
http://polscieu.ideasoneurope.eu/2011/07/27/open-data-activism-political-science-and-network-visualisation-of-eu-expert-groups/

I've got the 10 lines of code for this transformation from an initial network file (gml) for iGraph for R, if somebody is interested. I'm also happy to give some help on network analysis and its strengths and limits if that would be of interest. I'm not really working on this at the moment and I've never worked with really large datasets, but I'd be glad to give advice as far as possible.

For those of you based in and around Hamburg (Germany), let me also point you to the fact that the global network science & network analysis community meets for the INSNA Sunbelt Conference next week over there (21-26 May): http://www.insna.org/sunbelt.html

Ronny



---
Ronny Patz
EU Communications & Policy Officer

Transparency International
Liaison Office to the EU
Rue Breydel 40, B-1040 Brussels, Belgium
EU Transparency Register N° 501222919-71

T. + 32 (0) 2 23 58 640
E. rpatz at transparency.org
Twitter: @ti_eu





-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: openspending-bounces at lists.okfn.org im Auftrag von Lucy Chambers
Gesendet: Mi 15.05.2013 09:15
An: openspending
Betreff: [OpenSpending] Network Analysis, Spending and Procurement
 
Hi All,

Further to my last post, I've added a few comments to the tools ecostem for
spending data a piece on Network analysis as a lot of the people we have
interviewed or spoken to in the last months have been very interested in
this.

I'm not an expert in this field - so would appreciate some additional eyes
and comments! (it's the section at the bottom of this doc).

https://docs.google.com/a/okfn.org/document/d/12Wyqif_uqX01NYgY9xZumpq-y_NmU2ipoT3_FkU8AFU/edit

Lucy

-- 

**

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