Community Structure and Resilience of the City Logistics Networks in China

Abstract

Logistics security, as the lifeline of the economy connecting production, distribution, and consumption, holds a pivotal position in the modern economic system, where any potential threats like natural disasters or cyber attacks could have far-reaching impacts on the overall economy. With a unique large-scale logistics data set, logistics networks between cities in China are constructed. We thus identify communities of cities that have dense logistics connections in these networks. The cities in the communities are found to exhibit strong connections in the economy, resources, and industry. The detected communities are also aligned with the urban agglomerations mentioned in the guidelines reported by the National Development and Reform Commission of China. We further extend our analysis to assess the resilience of the city logistics networks, especially focusing on the influence of community structures. Random and intentional attacks are considered in our resilience analysis. Our results reveal that the city logistics networks are robust to the random attacks and are vulnerable to the intentional attacks on the nodes with dense links between and within communities. Our results not only deepen our understanding of the community structure and resilience of the city logistics networks but also provide insights on how to improve the efficiency and safety of intercity logistics.