Study on cascading failure vulnerability of the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road container shipping network

Abstract

The 21st-century Maritime Silk Road container shipping network (MSRCSN) is pivotal for global economic and social progress, yet it exhibits vulnerabilities impacting the stability of maritime transportation and international trade. This study conducts a comprehensive analysis of the MSRCSN's network topology, demonstrating its insignificant small-world and scale-free properties. We introduce an enhanced cascading failure model grounded in a nonlinear capacity framework, enabling the examination of maritime shipping networks' vulnerability to cascading failures, predicated solely on routes connectivity and empirical port load data. Applying this model to the MSRCSN, our findings corroborate a pronounced increase in dynamic vulnerability due to cascading failures, compared to static vulnerability. The network's static structure is exceedingly susceptible to disruptions at ports with high connectivity, whereas in the context of cascading failures, the greatest vulnerability lies in ports with substantial load. Efforts to augment port capacity yield marginal benefits in mitigating dynamic vulnerability. We propose the novel concept of network capacity investment cost, revealing that prioritizing capacity redundancy for lower-load ports can optimize overall investment efficiency in network capacity. These insights offer strategic guidance for enhancing the resilience of the MSRCSN against vulnerabilities.