Social Network Analysis

WarrenPettey

The description for the Schematics extension mentions that users can create representations of social networks using the Schematics extension.  And, in fact, in the training video and video transcript for Introduction to ArcGIS Schematics, the presenter, ESRI's Rick Anderson, demos a prototype "Social Network Analyst" (pg 68 on the transcript and at 48:43 in the presentation video). 

However, outside this presentation, I haven't seen use of Schematics for social network representation or analysis.  I spent an hour on the phone with an ESRI tech and he and I were unable to find any demonstrations or this elusive "Social network Analyst" toolbar.

I work in public health/epidemiology/infectious disease,and the ability to model social interactions is becoming increasingly important.  The challenge modeling social networks is that they're really aspatial contact actions that take place in a spatial domain.  In other words, if A contacts B, and then B contacts C, and if A is infectious with a disease and B and C are susceptible, it's really difficult to represent that as a spatial geography--a big dot or animation in, say, a classroom isn't satisfying or really all that meaningful.

Social network analysis software has made considerable development recently. Examples of this software are UCINet, Pajek, and NodeXL (free extension for MS Excel).

I'd like to drop graphs of social network contacts on a geography in much the same way utility companies can represent complex transmission lines and pipelines on a geography.

My apologies if this is in the wrong forum or if there's something already being developed or in use.  If so, please point me in the right direction.

Thanks!

RickAnderson

It was just a prototype and the decision was to not continue with it.  For large scale social network analysis, we have a business partner, I2, that builds software specific to SNA.  Everything that was shown in the video was build on top of the public api and can be reproduced.  Starting at version 10, there is a SchematicsDigitizingTool sample in the desktop developer kit.  That will allow you to do custom digitizing directly on a diagram very similar to what was done in the video.  If you already have the data in a tabular format with some concept of connectivity (from/to information) and geographic position (x,y), then you can simply use our custom query capability to have schematics draw this data.  Initially using the correct x,y given in the table, but then using the other out of the box algorithms for alternate visualizations.  The basics of this concept is covered in the help system as well as in a white paper (Using Schematics for Inside Plant Representation) that can be found on the website: 
http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/extensions/schematics/brochures-whitepapers.html