Effective augmentation of complex networks

Networks science plays an enormous role in many aspects of modern society from distributing electrical power across nations to spreading information and social networking amongst global populations. While modern networks constantly change in size, few studies have sought methods for the difficult task of optimising this growth. Here we study theoretical requirements for augmenting networks by adding source or sink nodes, without requiring additional driver-nodes to accommodate the change i.e., conserving structural controllability. Our "effective augmentation" algorithm takes advantage of clusters intrinsic to the network topology, and permits rapidly and efficient augmentation of a large number of nodes in one time-step. "Effective augmentation" is shown to work successfully on a wide range of model and real networks. The method has numerous applications (e.g. study of biological, social, power and technological networks) and potentially of significant practical and economic value.