A pretopological approach for structural analysis

The aim of this article is to present a methodological approach for problems encountered in structural analysis. This approach is based upon the pretopological concepts of pseudoclosure and minimal closed subsets. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a framework which is general enough to model and formulate different types of connections that exist between the elements of a population. In addition, it has enabled us to develop a new structural analysis algorithm. An explanation of the definitions and properties of the pretopological concepts applied in this work is first shown and illustrated in sample settings. The structural analysis algorithm is then described and the results obtained in an economic study of the impact of geographic proximity on scientific collaborations are presented.