Vulnerability Analysis of Urban Infrastructures

Abstract

Continuous functionality of critical infrastructure systems is essential to support the social and economic organization of productive sectors within a country. Electric power, potable water, telecommunications, natural gas, and transportation are examples of these critical systems, whose nature makes them suitable for network analysis. This study presents the topological characterization of the city electric power network. The properties of complex network, including average path length, clustering coefficient and degree distribution, have been studied and the electric power network of a major city in Central China is demonstrated as an example, the result shows that the electric power network exhibits small-world network property with short average pathlength and high clustering coefficient. Through the analysis about the practical interpretation of those statistical parameters, we propose some possible reasons for these properties. Finally, the vulnerability of electric power network is simulated and analyzed under selective attacks and random failures.