We present a method to find the best temporal partition at any time scale and rank the relevance of partitions found at different time scales. This method is based on random walkers coevolving with the network and as such constitutes a generalization of partition stability to the case of temporal networks. We show that, when applied to a toy model and real data sets, temporal stability uncovers structures that are persistent over meaningful time scales as well as important isolated events, making it an effective tool to study both abrupt changes and gradual evolution of a network mesoscopic structures.

• Received 19 November 2013
• Revised 17 July 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.90.022813