Robustness and efficiency of international pesticide trade networks subject to link removal strategies

The international pesticide trade network (iPTN) is a key factor affecting global food production and food security. The trade relationship is a key component in iPTNs. In a complex international trade environment, we model the impacts of uncertain factors such as trade wars, economic blockades and local wars, as removing vital relationships in the trade network. There are many complex network studies on node centrality, but few on link centrality or link importance. We propose a new method for computing network link centrality. The main innovation of the method is in converting the original network into a dual graph, the nodes in the dual graph corresponding to the links of the original network. Through the dual graph, the node centrality indicators can measure the centrality of the links in the original network. We verify the effectiveness of the network link centrality indicator based on the dual graph in the iPTN, analyze the relationship between the existing network link centrality indicators and the indicator proposed in this paper, and compare their differences. It is found that the trade relationships with larger indicators (hub, outcloseness, outdegree) based on the dual graph have a greater impact on network efficiency than those based on the original pesticide trade networks.