An Optimization Method for Critical Node Identification in Aviation Network

Abstract

Air transport involves a long-distance journey; it is the main method of transnational travel, which is also an important connection channel between countries/regions. The aviation network is one of the core national transportation networks, whose importance is self-evident. To improve the management efficiency of the aviation network, this study studies the topological characteristics of the global aviation network in detail. The findings show that the global aviation network is a scale-free heterogeneous network, and the aviation network is tolerant of random faults. However, if key nodes are deliberately attacked, the network structure can easily be destroyed into fragments. To further explore the importance of nodes, combined with the background of airport mergers or unions, the node shrinkage method is improved by weighing network edges with the number of edges and ranking the importance of each node in the aviation network. This study compares the results of the node importance calculation by the node shrinkage method and improved weighted node shrinkage method, respectively. The results show that the ranking results obtained from the weighted node shrinkage method are better than those obtained from the traditional node shrinkage method. To further verify the validity of the weighted node shrinkage method, this study conducts a sensitivity analysis by calculating the weights of nodes and edges with different values. The results imply that the rank changes of node importance in the top 20 global aviation networks are the same. Therefore, it is important to find the key nodes in the aviation network and take corresponding protective measures to protect the stability of the global aviation network and improve the efficiency of the management of the aviation network.