Robustness of a network formed of spatially embedded networks

Bootstrap percolation on hypergraph

Bootstrap percolation is a widely studied model to investigate the robustness of a network for cascading failures. Extensive real-world data analysis has revealed the existence of higher-order interactions among elements, i.e., the interactions beyond pairwise, which are usually described by hypergraphs. In this paper, we propose a generalized bootstrap percolation model on hypergraph, which assumes that the activation of an inactive node depends on the number of active neighbors through its hyperedges. Through numerical simulation and theoretical analysis, we found that the bootstrap percolation threshold and the phase transition type are closely related to the infection threshold and the proportion of higher-order edges. When the infection threshold is significant, for any initial activation probability, the size of the giant active component (GAC) shows continuous growth with increasing occupation probability. When the infection threshold is small, with the increase of the initial activation probability, the size of the GAC changes from continuous growth to discontinuous growth. In addition, we found that in the case of a fixed network average degree, increasing the proportion of higher-order edges will reduce the percolation threshold, which is conducive to enhancing the robustness of the network. At the same time, higher-order edges create more opportunities for inactive nodes to be activated, and increasing the proportion of higher-order edges under the same conditions will change the size of the GAC from continuous growth to discontinuous growth.

Asymmetric interdependent networks with multiple-dependence relation

In this paper, we study the robustness of interdependent networks with multiple-dependence (MD) relation which is defined that a node is interdependent on several nodes on another layer, and this node will fail if any of these dependent nodes are failed. We propose a two-layered asymmetric interdependent network (AIN) model to address this problem, where the asymmetric feature is that nodes in one layer may be dependent on more than one node in the other layer with MD relation, while nodes in the other layer are dependent on exactly one node in this layer. We show that in this model the layer where nodes are allowed to have MD relation exhibits different types of phase transitions (discontinuous and hybrid), while the other layer only presents discontinuous phase transition. A heuristic theory based on message-passing approach is developed to understand the structural feature of interdependent networks and an intuitive picture for the emergence of a tricritical point is provided. Moreover, we study the correlation between the intralayer degree and interlayer degree of the nodes and find that this correlation has prominent impact to the continuous phase transition but has feeble effect on the discontinuous phase transition. Furthermore, we extend the two-layered AIN model to general multilayered AIN, and the percolation behaviors and properties of relevant phase transitions are elaborated.

Asymmetry in interdependence makes a multilayer system more robust against cascading failures

Multilayer networked systems are ubiquitous in nature and engineering, and the robustness of these systems against failures is of great interest. A main line of theoretical pursuit has been percolation-induced cascading failures, where interdependence between network layers is conveniently and tacitly assumed to be symmetric. In the real world, interdependent interactions are generally asymmetric. To uncover and quantify the impact of asymmetry in interdependence on network robustness, we focus on percolation dynamics in double-layer systems and implement the following failure mechanism: Once a node in a network layer fails, the damage it can cause depends not only on its position in the layer but also on the position of its counterpart neighbor in the other layer. We find that the characteristics of the percolation transition depend on the degree of asymmetry, where the striking phenomenon of a switch in the nature of the phase transition from first to second order arises. We derive a theory to calculate the percolation transition points in both network layers, as well as the transition switching point, with strong numerical support from synthetic and empirical networks. Not only does our work shed light on the factors that determine the robustness of multilayer networks against cascading failures, but it also provides a scenario by which the system can be designed or controlled to reach a desirable level of resilience.

Social contagions on interconnected networks of heterogeneous populations

Recently, the dynamics of social contagions ranging from the adoption of a new product to the diffusion of a rumor have attracted more and more attention from researchers. However, the combined effects of individual's heterogenous adoption behavior and the interconnected structure on the social contagions processes have yet to be understood deeply. In this paper, we study theoretically and numerically the social contagions with heterogeneous adoption threshold in interconnected networks. We first develop a generalized edge-based compartmental approach to predict the evolution of social contagion dynamics on interconnected networks. Both the theoretical predictions and numerical results show that the growth of the final recovered fraction with the intralayer propagation rate displays double transitions. When increasing the initial adopted proportion or the adopted threshold, the first transition remains continuous within different dynamic parameters, but the second transition gradually vanishes. When decreasing the interlayer propagation rate, the change in the double transitions mentioned above is also observed. The heterogeneity of degree distribution does not affect the type of first transition, but increasing the heterogeneity of degree distribution results in the type change of the second transition from discontinuous to continuous. The consistency between the theoretical predictions and numerical results confirms the validity of our proposed analytical approach.

The "weak" interdependence of infrastructure systems produces mixed percolation transitions in multilayer networks

Previous studies of multilayer network robustness model cascading failures via a node-to-node percolation process that assumes "strong" interdependence across layers-once a node in any layer fails, its neighbors in other layers fail immediately and completely with all links removed. This assumption is not true of real interdependent infrastructures that have emergency procedures to buffer against cascades. In this work, we consider a node-to-link failure propagation mechanism and establish "weak" interdependence across layers via a tolerance parameter α which quantifies the likelihood that a node survives when one of its interdependent neighbors fails. Analytical and numerical results show that weak interdependence produces a striking phenomenon: layers at different positions within the multilayer system experience distinct percolation transitions. Especially, layers with high super degree values percolate in an abrupt manner, while those with low super degree values exhibit both continuous and discontinuous transitions. This novel phenomenon we call mixed percolation transitions has significant implications for network robustness. Previous results that do not consider cascade tolerance and layer super degree may be under- or over-estimating the vulnerability of real systems. Moreover, our model reveals how nodal protection activities influence failure dynamics in interdependent, multilayer systems.

Social contagions on interdependent lattice networks

Although an increasing amount of research is being done on the dynamical processes on interdependent spatial networks, knowledge of how interdependent spatial networks influence the dynamics of social contagion in them is sparse. Here we present a novel non-Markovian social contagion model on interdependent spatial networks composed of two identical two-dimensional lattices. We compare the dynamics of social contagion on networks with different fractions of dependency links and find that the density of final recovered nodes increases as the number of dependency links is increased. We use a finite-size analysis method to identify the type of phase transition in the giant connected components (GCC) of the final adopted nodes and find that as we increase the fraction of dependency links, the phase transition switches from second-order to first-order. In strong interdependent spatial networks with abundant dependency links, increasing the fraction of initial adopted nodes can induce the switch from a first-order to second-order phase transition associated with social contagion dynamics. In networks with a small number of dependency links, the phase transition remains second-order. In addition, both the second-order and first-order phase transition points can be decreased by increasing the fraction of dependency links or the number of initially-adopted nodes.

Structural Robustness of Unidirectional Dependent Networks Based on Attack Strategies

Current works have been focused on the robustness of single network and interdependent networks. However, to be more correct, the dependence of many real systems should be described as unidirectional. To study the structural robustness of networks with unidirectional dependence, the dependent networks named UDN are proposed, the description of the propagation of failures in them is given, as well as the introduction of the attack strategies that the probability of a node being attacked depends on the degree (DP attack) or on the betweenness (BP attack) of this node. The simulated results show that UDN is more vulnerable to BP attack when is first attacked a node with high betweenness. Compared with the Interacting Networks (IN), the UDN is more fragile under the two attack’s strategies.

Cascading failures in coupled networks: The critical role of node-coupling strength across networks

The robustness of coupled networks against node failure has been of interest in the past several years, while most of the researches have considered a very strong node-coupling method, i.e., once a node fails, its dependency partner in the other network will fail immediately. However, this scenario cannot cover all the dependency situations in real world, and in most cases, some nodes cannot go so far as to fail due to theirs self-sustaining ability in case of the failures of their dependency partners. In this paper, we use the percolation framework to study the robustness of interdependent networks with weak node-coupling strength across networks analytically and numerically, where the node-coupling strength is controlled by an introduced parameter α. If a node fails, each link of its dependency partner will be removed with a probability 1-α. By tuning the fraction of initial preserved nodes p, we find a rich phase diagram in the plane p-α, with a crossover point at which a first-order percolation transition changes to a second-order percolation transition.

Cascading failures in coupled networks with both inner-dependency and inter-dependency links

We study the percolation in coupled networks with both inner-dependency and inter-dependency links, where the inner- and inter-dependency links represent the dependencies between nodes in the same or different networks, respectively. We find that when most of dependency links are inner- or inter-ones, the coupled networks system is fragile and makes a discontinuous percolation transition. However, when the numbers of two types of dependency links are close to each other, the system is robust and makes a continuous percolation transition. This indicates that the high density of dependency links could not always lead to a discontinuous percolation transition as the previous studies. More interestingly, although the robustness of the system can be optimized by adjusting the ratio of the two types of dependency links, there exists a critical average degree of the networks for coupled random networks, below which the crossover of the two types of percolation transitions disappears, and the system will always demonstrate a discontinuous percolation transition. We also develop an approach to analyze this model, which is agreement with the simulation results well.

Bootstrap percolation on spatial networks

Bootstrap percolation is a general representation of some networked activation process, which has found applications in explaining many important social phenomena, such as the propagation of information. Inspired by some recent findings on spatial structure of online social networks, here we study bootstrap percolation on undirected spatial networks, with the probability density function of long-range links' lengths being a power law with tunable exponent. Setting the size of the giant active component as the order parameter, we find a parameter-dependent critical value for the power-law exponent, above which there is a double phase transition, mixed of a second-order phase transition and a hybrid phase transition with two varying critical points, otherwise there is only a second-order phase transition. We further find a parameter-independent critical value around -1, about which the two critical points for the double phase transition are almost constant. To our surprise, this critical value -1 is just equal or very close to the values of many real online social networks, including LiveJournal, HP Labs email network, Belgian mobile phone network, etc. This work helps us in better understanding the self-organization of spatial structure of online social networks, in terms of the effective function for information spreading.