Comparing Complex Networks: An Application to Emergency Managers' Mental Models

Abstract

This paper describes an exploratory work that aims to identify a semantic basis underlying a mental model from the field of emergency management using a collaborative approach. An experimental application of the distance ratio measure was used to compare individual networks among themselves and to analyze the aggregated network representing the group mental model. The data was obtained by surveying a group of Civil Protection graduates and aggregating all the answers (shared mental model). The data allowed us to deepen the analysis of the resulting network in order to understand the main group concepts and their relations within this domain.