A Community-Structure-Based Method for Estimating the Fractal Dimension, and its Application to Water Networks for the Assessment of Vulnerability to Disasters

C. Giudicianni (), A. Nardo (), R. Greco () and A. Scala ()
Additional contact information
C. Giudicianni: Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
A. Nardo: Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
R. Greco: Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
A. Scala: Italian National Research Council

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2021, vol. 35, issue 4, No 5, 1197-1210

Abstract: Abstract Most real-world networks, from the World-Wide-Web to biological systems, are known to have common structural properties. A remarkable point is fractality, which suggests the self-similarity across scales of the network structure of these complex systems. Managing the computational complexity for detecting the self-similarity of big-sized systems represents a crucial problem. In this paper, a novel algorithm for revealing the fractality, that exploits the community structure principle, is proposed and then applied to several water distribution systems (WDSs) of different size, unveiling a self-similar feature of their layouts. A scaling-law relationship, linking the number of clusters necessary for covering the network and their average size is defined, the exponent of which represents the fractal dimension. The self-similarity is then investigated as a proxy of recurrent and specific response to multiple random pipe failures – like during natural disasters – pointing out a specific global vulnerability for each WDS. A novel vulnerability index, called Cut-Vulnerability is introduced as the ratio between the fractal dimension and the average node degree, and its relationships with the number of randomly removed pipes necessary to disconnect the network and with some topological metrics are investigated. The analysis shows the effectiveness of the novel index in describing the global vulnerability of WDSs.

Keywords: Complex networks; Critical infrastructures; Natural disasters; Topology; Water distribution systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11269-021-02773-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:35:y:2021:i:4:d:10.1007_s11269-021-02773-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-021-02773-y

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().