Cascading failure analysis and restoration strategy in an interdependent network

Abstract

In modern society, many infrastructures are interdependent owing to functional and logical relations among components in different systems. These networked infrastructures can be modeled as interdependent networks. In the real world, different networks carry different traffic loads whose values are dynamic and stem from the load redistribution in the same network and disturbance from the interdependent network. Interdependency makes interdependent networks so fragile that even a slight initial disturbance may lead to a cascading failure of the entire systems. In this paper, interdependencies among networks are modeled and a failure cascade process is studied considering their effects on failure propagation. Meanwhile, an in-process restoration strategy after the initial failure is investigated. The restoration effects depend strongly on the trigger timing, restoration probability and priority of the restoration actions along with the additional disturbances. Our findings highlight the necessity to decrease the large-scale cascading failure by structuring and managing an interdependent network reasonably.