Cascading failures with coupled map lattices on Watts–Strogatz networks

Abstract

In this paper, we present a cascading failure model based on coupled map lattices, in which a given number of crucial nodes are perturbed at the same time. By comparing the effect of five attacking strategies: random strategy, high-degree strategy, high-clustering coefficient strategy, high-betweenness strategy and high-closeness strategy (HCS) on Watts–Strogatz (WS) small-world networks, we found that HCS outperforms the other attacking strategies with different number of perturbed nodes. The efficiency of HCS on WS small-world networks is explored extensively. The results show that increasing the rewiring probability can reduce the range of cascading failures, but it will enhance the propagation speed of cascades. Furthermore, a more compact network structure will lead to a faster cascading failure propagation speed, and the propagation speed of cascades is inversely proportional to the characteristic path length of WS small-world networks. Our work will highlight a better understanding of cascading failures on complex networks.