Associated with the desire to have realistic contact networks for entire populations, comes the need to characterise such networks in a relatively parsimonious manner that provides important insights into the types of epidemiological dynamics that could be realised. Such a characterisation would allow for different networks (from different times or different locations) to be compared in a manner that is epidemiologically significant and would allow artificial networks to be created that matched particular known network features. This clearly relies on both existing measures of network structure (as outlined in Section 3) together with a robust understand of how such features influence the transient epidemic dynamics (as outlined in Section 4.2). However, such a generic understanding of all network features is unlikely to arise for many years. A more immediate challenge is to understand ways in which local network structure (clustering, cliques, and spatially localised connections) influence the epidemiological dynamics.