Design Robust Networks against Overload-Based Cascading Failures

Abstract

Cascading failures are an interesting phenomenon in the study of complex networks and have attracted great attention. Examples of cascading failures include disease epidemics, traffic congestion, and electrical power system blackouts. In these systems, if external shocks or excess loads at some nodes are propagated to other connected nodes because of failure, a domino effect often occurs with disastrous consequences. Therefore, how to prevent cascading failures in complex networks is emerging as an important issue. A vast amount of research has attempted to design large networked infrastructures with the capability to withstand failures and fluctuations; this can be thought of as an optimal design task. In this paper, a cascading failure on an overload-based model was studied and a novel core-periphery network topology was heuristically designed to mitigate the damage of cascading failures. Using the Largest Connected Component after a sequence of failures as the network robustness measure, numerical simulations show that the proposed network, which consists of a complete core of connected hub nodes and periphery nodes connecting to the core, is the least susceptible to cascading failures compared to other types of networks.