Cascading failure in Watts–Strogatz small-world networks

Yongxiang Xia, Jin Fan and David Hill

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2010, vol. 389, issue 6, 1281-1285

Abstract: In this paper, we study the cascading failure in Watts–Strogatz small-world networks. We find that this network model has a heterogeneous betweenness distribution, although its degree distribution is homogeneous. Further study shows that this small-world network is robust to random attack but fragile to intentional attack, in the cascading failure scenario. With comparison to standard random graph and scale-free networks, our result indicates that the robust yet fragile property in the cascading failure scenario is mainly related to heterogeneous betweenness, rather than the network degree distribution. Thus, it suggests that we have to be very careful when we use terms such as homogeneous network and heterogeneous network, unless the distribution we refer to is specified.

Keywords: Complex networks; Small-world networks; Betweenness; Cascading failure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:389:y:2010:i:6:p:1281-1285

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2009.11.037

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