Improvement of network robustness against cascading failures based on the min–max edge-adding strategy

Abstract

This paper explores the improvement of the network robustness against cascading failures by edge addition. Several edge-adding strategies are compared, including the random edge-adding strategy, the high betweenness centrality edge-adding strategy, the high Pagerank centrality strategy and the min–max edge-adding strategy. In the min–max edge-adding strategy, the problem for robustness improvement of complex networks is formulated as a nonlinear integer programming problem, and an algorithm is proposed to solve this problem. From the numerical experiments, we find that the min–max edge-adding strategy is more effective in improving the network robustness against cascading failures than the other strategies. Finally, this work can provide guidance for the design of complex networks to prevent potential cascading failures.