Coevolution and Many-Objective Search Optimization in Multilayer Social Networks

当今社会有大量的社会数据，社会网络分析可以利用这些数据对现实生活中社会、经济等复杂系统的结构和动态进行建模和研究。从市场营销和活动分析到以用户为中心的推荐系统，从动态资源分配到能源管理和城市规划，它为行业和决策者提供了广泛的机会，以优化他们的程序并提高广泛应用领域的效率。社交网络大多被建模为图结构，其中社会参与者由节点和边表示，代表他们之间的交互或关系。然而，在最复杂的社会系统中，社会行动者通常同时是多个网络的成员，并且它们之间存在着不止一种关系。例如，一个人可能在友谊网络中与某人联系在一起，同时他们也在职业网络中联系在一起。同时在多个社交网络中拥有会员资格对他们的行为和决策过程有巨大的影响，这突出了对多层社交网络分析的需求，其中每一层代表不同社会背景和环境（例如，友谊网络）中参与者的互动和行为。近年来，这些社会网络的结构受到了广泛的关注。然而，由于其复杂性和动态性，该领域仍存在许多尚未解决的问题。本研究的重点是开发有效和高效的解决方案，以探索动态多层社会网络的共同进化，并利用计算智能和社会网络分析技术研究其随时间的行为。我们构建了一个多层双继承进化框架，利用从网络结构和个体行为中提取的知识来跟踪共同进化。我们还研究了这些网络中的社会影响，并定义了衡量它的指标和方法。此外，我们将使用提出的框架来研究现实社会网络的行为并调查其潜在模式。我们将进一步研究这些共同进化网络中的多目标搜索优化问题，并解决与它们的异构、大规模和复杂结构相关的关键问题、挑战和机遇。

Nowadays, a vast amount of social data is available, which can be utilized by social network analysis to model and study the structure and dynamics of real-life complex systems such as social and economic systems. It provides a wide range of opportunities for industries and decision-makers to optimize their procedures and increase efficiency across a broad area of applications, from marketing and campaign analysis to user-centric recommendation systems and from dynamic resource allocation to energy management and urban planning. Social networks are mostly modeled as graph structures where the social actors are represented by the nodes and the edges, representing interactions or relationships between them. However, social actors in the most complex and social systems usually are members of multiple networks simultaneously, and more than one kind of relationship exists between them. For example, a person may be linked to someone in a friendship network while they are also connected in a professional network. Having a membership in multiple social networks simultaneously has an enormous impact on their actions and decision-making process, highlighting the need for multi-layer social network analysis, where each layer represents the interactions and behavior of the actors in different social contexts and environments (e.g.,, friendship network). In recent years, much attention has been paid to the structure of these social networks. However, there are still many open problems in the field due to their complex and dynamic nature. This proposal focuses on developing effective and efficient solutions to explore the co-evolution of dynamic multi-layer social networks and study their behaviors over time using computational intelligence and social network analysis techniques. We build a multi-layer dual-inheritance evolutionary framework that utilizes the extracted knowledge from both the networks' structures and individual behavior to track the co-evolution. We also study social influence in these networks and define metrics and methods to measure it.   Additionally, we will use the proposed framework to study the behavior of real-life social networks and investigate their underlying patterns. We will further study the problem of many-objective search optimization in these co-evolving networks and address critical issues, challenges, and opportunities associated with their heterogeneous, large-scale, and complex structures.