Abstract
Systems being made up of interrelated elements, such as social organizations and the Internet, can be regarded as networks, where nodes and links respectively correspond to the elements and the relationships among the elements. This perspective enables us to grasp the nature of systems in terms of structural characteristics of corresponding networks. For example, we can locate important elements in systems, and furthermore, compare and classify systems based on styles in which they are built, by structural analysis and modeling of their networks. The viewpoint that tries to uniformly understand various systems, even from different disciplines such as systems in nature and artificial systems, in terms of network structure helps us discovering universal characteristics of behavior and development of the systems. To show the aim, significance and potential of this approach, this paper discusses and introduces important works on the following three topics; structural analysis of networks, models of networks, and their practical applications.
