Cascading failures of interdependent modular small-world networks

Abstract

Much empirical evidence shows that many real-world networks fall into the broad class of small-world networks and have a modular structure. The modularity has been revealed to have an important effect on cascading failure in isolated networks. However, the corresponding results for interdependent modular small-world networks remain missing. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between cascading failures and the intra-modular rewiring probabilities and inter-modular connections under different coupling preferences, i.e. random coupling with modules (RCWM), assortative coupling in modules (ACIM) and assortative coupling with modules (ACWM). The size of the largest connected component is used to evaluate the robustness from global and local perspectives. Numerical results indicate that increasing intra-modular rewiring probabilities and inter-modular connections can improve the robustness of interdependent modular small-world networks under intra-attacks and inter-attacks. Meanwhile, experiments on three coupling strategies demonstrate that ACIM has a better effect on preventing the cascading failures compared with RCWM and ACWM. These results can be helpful to allocate and optimize the topological structure of interdependent modular small-world networks to improve the robustness of such networks.