A universal index for measuring network interconnectedness

Abstract

Traditionally, there were many indexes proposed for network interconnectedness measurement. But they were actually abused. These indexes were either for connected networks or for unconnected networks. There is still no index suitable for both connected networks and unconnected networks. To solve the problem, a new index is constructed for interconnectedness measurement by synthesizing the average shortest path length and the average number of disconnected node pairs. And the theory how to construct it and why it is correct is illustrated systematically. At last, a case is adopted to test and verify the validity of the proposed index.