Quantifying centrality using a novel flow-based measure: Implications for sustainable urban development

The flow of essential elements such as people, goods, and information through complex networks has become a critical factor in shaping urban dynamics and regional development. Quantifying location centrality plays an indispensable role not only in urban infrastructure planning but also in National central city planning. Two vital aspects should be considered for central nodes in flow-based complex networks: their impact on adjacent nodes and the diversity of nodes they affect. In this paper, we present a centrality measure index (C-index) that accounts for flow volume and flow directions, offering a high degree of interpretability. We applied the C-index to four public weighted complex networks, demonstrating that our method outperforms classical methods. Furthermore, we validated the effectiveness and advantages of C-index on quantifying location centrality both in inter-city and intra-city population mobility network. The centrality findings from the perspective of population mobility can reinforce guidelines for understanding National central cities and polycentric structure of cities, thereby facilitating policy-making of sustainable urban development.