Complex network based approaches to enable software-aided management and planning

Software tools to perform complex network analysis can be a valuable help in decision making for infrastructure development plans and environmental planning. However, it is necessary to build a data model of a region, including elements such as cities, geographical features and protected areas, and representing constraints where applicable, like in the case of defining ecological corridors. The issue of building a model to enable computation at a desirable level of abstraction is nontrivial. We discuss different models to represent a region as a network, in order to enable analysis based on techniques derived from graph theory, complex network theory, and operational research. In doing so, we highlight the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to this problem.