Inferring networks from time series: a neural approach
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Published version
Author(s)
Gaskin, Thomas
Pavliotis, Grigorios A
Girolami, Mark
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Network structures underlie the dynamics of many complex phenomena, from gene regulation and foodwebs to power grids and social media. Yet, as they often cannot be observed directly, their connectivities must be inferred from observations of the dynamics to which they give rise. In this work we present a powerful computational method to infer large network adjacency matrices from time series data using a neural network, in order to provide uncertainty quantification on the prediction in a manner that reflects both the degree to which the inference problem is underdetermined as well as the noise on the data. This is a feature that other approaches have hitherto been lacking. We demonstrate our method's capabilities by inferring line failure locations in the British power grid from its response to a power cut, providing probability densities on each edge and allowing the use of hypothesis testing to make meaningful probabilistic statements about the location of the cut. Our method is significantly more accurate than both Markov-chain Monte Carlo sampling and least squares regression on noisy data and when the problem is underdetermined, while naturally extending to the case of non-linear dynamics, which we demonstrate by learning an entire cost matrix for a non-linear model of economic activity in Greater London. Not having been specifically engineered for network inference, this method in fact represents a general parameter estimation scheme that is applicable to any high-dimensional parameter space.
Date Issued
2024-04
Date Acceptance
2024-01-22
Citation
PNAS Nexus, 2024, 3 (4)
ISSN
2752-6542
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Journal / Book Title
PNAS Nexus
Volume
3
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of National Academy of Sciences.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae063
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
pgae063
Date Publish Online
2024-02-09