Multiplex Analysis of the Global Interdependent Country-Country Network

Globalization created a space in which all countries became interdependent. Full autharchy at the country level has gone practically extinct. Countries need each other, in different and interdependent ways. No country can produce by itself everything that its citizens need: it has to sell and buy products on the international market. Complex interdependencies in collaboration networks require millions of people flowing from one country to the other for business, scientific and political exchanges. Supply and demand of skilled and unskilled labor is fluid and drives people to migrate from one country to another. These are some of the ways in which countries can relate to each other economically.
These relations can be represented by networks with multiple relation types, called multiplex networks. Multiplex network analysis is a novel branch of complex network analysis, which has gathered a significant amount of attention from researchers worldwide. While network scientists have started uncovering the fundamental mechanics of multiplex networks, the empirical analysis and practical applications of these new objects are still in their infancy. This is the main aim of this project: to gather data about multiplex networks between countries, and to develop algorithms, analytic frameworks and visualization techniques to increase our proficiency in dealing with such complex objects.
We will build country multiplex networks using datasets from different sources, connecting countries if between them we observe significant business relationships, high migration flows, intensive trade, large passenger traffic, cultural similarities, and so on. The aim is to explain the interdependence between these relationships and the consequences of severing one or more of these channels; to understand the connection between the centrality of a country in this multidimensional space and its economic development; and to visualize these global relationships.