Dresden 2014 – scientific programme
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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
SOE 16: Networks - Statistics and Dynamics (joint with BP and DY)
SOE 16.11: Talk
Wednesday, April 2, 2014, 17:45–18:00, ZEU 118
Large networks have small Problems — •Helge Aufderheide1 and Thilo Gross2 — 1Max-Planck Institut für Physik komlpexer Systeme — 2University of Bristol, MV School of Engineering Mathematics
On several levels, humans depend on the functioning of complex networks, such as food webs and technical infrastructure networks. However, recent work shows that trying to stabilize a network can lead to large-scale failures. This suggests that it is important to assess not only the risk of a failure, but also its scale. Here we show that instabilities which naturally occur in large networks are typically localized, such that they affect only a relatively small part of the network directly, whereas attempts to stabilize the network can lead to a delocalization, such that instabilities are less likely but will affect a larger number of nodes when they occur. These results may explain how many natural networks can stabilize themselves by sacrificing the parts in which instabilities occur, whereas cases of delocalized systemic failure are known to occur in artificial technical or organizational networks.