Triadic Motifs in the Partitioned World Trade Web

Abstract

One of the crucial aspects of the Internet of Things that influences the effectiveness of communication among devices is the communication model, for which no universal solution exists. The actual interaction pattern can in general be represented as a directed graph, whose nodes represent the “Things” and whose directed edges represent the sent messages. Frequent patterns can identify channels or infrastructures to be strengthened and can help in choosing the most suitable message routing schema or network protocol. In general, frequent patterns have been called motifs and overrepresented motifs have been recognized to be the low-level building blocks of networks and to be useful to explain many of their properties, playing a relevant role in determining their dynamic and evolution. In this paper triadic motifs are found first partitioning a network by strength of connections and then analyzing the partitions separately. The case study is the World Trade Web (WTW), that is the directed graph connecting world Countries with trade relationships, with the aim of finding its topological characterization in terms of motifs and isolating the key factors underlying its evolution. The WTW has been split based on the weights of the graph to highlight structural differences between the big players in terms of volumes of trade and the rest of the world. As test case, the period 2003-2010 has been analyzed, to show the structural effect of the economical crisis in the year 2007.