Research on Deep Integration of the “Belt and Road” Aviation Network Based on Community Structure from the Perspective of China

Abstract

Air transport has broad development potential along the “ Belt and Road” by owing to its fast, direct, and comfortable advantages, and the community structure is an important factor determining the efficiency and service functions of the aviation network. The community detection and community structure analysis of the “Belt and Road” aviation network would help to understand the internal relationship of the “Belt and Road” aviation network spatial structure and better integrated and optimized the network. Based on the data of international routes between 522 airports along the “Belt and Road” in 2019, this paper establishes an aviation network model and calculates the degree, average path, clustering coefficient, and centrality index of the “Belt and Road” aviation network. Through Louvain community detection method, 522 airports in the aviation network were divided into four communities, and the structural characteristics and geographical distribution characteristics of the community network were analyzed. The key node identification model in the community is constructed, the hierarchy of each community network is analyzed using the k-core decomposition method, the core node set of the community network is found, the core boundary node set of four aviation community networks is identified, the core node set and core boundary nodes are analyzed repeatedly, and the key node set of the whole network is obtained. Finally, from the perspective of China, a deep integration scheme between Chinese airports, their communities, and other key node sets was proposed. The research found that there are four associations in the “Belt and Road” aviation network: West Asia and North Africa, Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and China and Southeast Asia. Chinese and Southeast Asian societies rank third among the four societies in terms of scale. They not only have the largest number of key nodes but also the lowest repetition rate of the key nodes. The international airline links in the “Belt and Road” aviation network are more complex. A total of 118 key nodes were identified, of which 83.1% were in the top 20% of overall network centrality.