Link Analysis has been around for awhile. There are software programs (Link Notebook) that deal with data in essentially the way that Lombardi. Try (http://www.intelcenter.com/linkanalysis.html) where a "map" of Al Qaeda has been produced.
Used primarily in Law enforcement and Counter-Terrorism tracking, they used information enetered into a database to graphically show relationships and interactions. There are many issues involved, not the least being the appearances of guilt that a graphic "connection" between two entities implies due to the limits of detail of the connection that can be displayed. E.g. two people meet, the content of the meeting is not known but if they are both connected to third person implicated in a scandal that meeting may be shown as part of the scandal. Your analysis is only a reliable as the information going into it.