Centrality Measures in Temporal Networks: A Critical and Comparative Survey

Abstract

Temporal networks offer a suitable representation for complex systems in which interactions vary over time, such as communication, transportation, and social networks. Identifying influential nodes in such networks is more challenging than in static graphs because node importance depends not only on network structure but also on the timing and ordering of interactions. Although many temporal centrality measures have been proposed, the literature remains fragmented, with limited consensus on their comparative performance and applicability. This paper presents a critical and comparative survey of centrality measures in temporal networks. We review both temporal extensions of classical centrality metrics and measures specifically designed for temporal graphs, and propose a functional taxonomy that categorizes existing approaches according to the primary mechanism through which influence is quantified in temporal networks. The proposed taxonomy organizes temporal centrality measures into interaction-based, path-based, walk-based, spectral-based and robustness-based categories, providing a unified perspective on their underlying principles. In addition, we provide comparative insights to help select appropriate temporal centrality measures under different network characteristics and application settings. To complement the survey, we conduct experiments on multiple real-world temporal network datasets. The measures are evaluated through influence spreading experiments using epidemic diffusion models, ranking consistency analysis based on Kendall's rank correlation, and runtime complexity analysis to assess computational efficiency and scalability. Finally, we highlight key open challenges and future research directions, including scalability for million-sized networks and the need for standardized evaluation frameworks.