A Survey on Centrality and Importance Measures in Hypergraphs: Categorization and Empirical Insights
Abstract
Identifying central entities and interactions is a fundamental problem in network science. While well-studied for graphs (pairwise relations), many biological and social systems exhibit higher-order interactions best modeled by hypergraphs. This has led to a proliferation of specialized hypergraph centrality measures, but the field remains fragmented and lacks a unifying framework. This paper addresses this gap by providing the first systematic survey of 39 distinct measures. We introduce a novel taxonomy classifying them as: (1) structural (topology-based), (2) functional (impact on system dynamics), or (3) contextual (incorporating external features). We also present an experimental assessment comparing their empirical similarity and computation time. Finally, we discuss applications, establishing a coherent roadmap for future research in this area.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.00107,
title = {A Survey on Centrality and Importance Measures in Hypergraphs: Categorization and Empirical Insights},
author = {Jaewan Chun and Fanchen Bu and Yeongho Kim and Atsushi Miyauchi and Francesco Bonchi and Kijung Shin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.00107},
year = {2025}
}