Robustness analysis metrics for worldwide airport network: A comprehensive study

Abstract

Robustness of transportation networks is one of the major challenges of the 21st century. This paper investigates the resilience of global air transportation from a complex network point of view, with focus on attacking strategies in the airport network, i.e., to remove airports from the system and see what could affect the air traffic system from a passenger’s perspective. Specifically, we identify commonalities and differences between several robustness measures and attacking strategies, proposing a novel notion of functional robustness: unaffected passengers with rerouting. We apply twelve attacking strategies to the worldwide airport network with three weights, and evaluate three robustness measures. We find that degree and Bonacich based attacks harm passenger weighted network most. Our evaluation is geared toward a unified view on air transportation network attack and serves as a foundation on how to develop effective mitigation strategies.