Dresden 2009 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 29: Statistical physics of complex networks

DY 29.11: Talk

Friday, March 27, 2009, 13:00–13:15, ZEU 255

Public transport networks under random failure and directed attack — Bertrand Berche¹, •Christian von Ferber^2,3, Taras Holovatch^1,2, and Yurij Holovatch^4,5 — ¹Laboratoire de Physique des Materiaux, Université Nancy, France — ²Applied Mathematics Research Centre, Coventry University, UK — ³Physikalisches Institut, Universität Freiburg — ⁴ICPM National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Lviv — ⁵Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Linz, Österreich

The behavior of complex networks under failure or attack depends strongly on the specific scenario. Of special interest are scale-free networks, which are usually seen as robust under random failure but appear to be especially vulnerable to targeted attacks. In a recent study of public transport networks of 14 major cities of the world we have shown that these systems when represented by appropriate graphs may exhibit scale-free behaviour [Physica A 380, 585 (2007)]. Our present analysis, focuses on the effects that defunct or removed nodes have on the properties of public transport networks. We confirm that the impact of random failure is weak and that for a moderate share of defunct nodes there is little to no change in the network behaviour. Simulating different directed attack strategies however, we derive vulnerability criteria that result in minimal strategies with high impact on these systems.