Interdependency analysis of infrastructures

Abstract

Electric power, potable water, telecommunications, natural gas, and transportation are examples of critical infrastructures, the intrinsic feature of which are suitable for network analysis. This paper proposes a method framework based on the complex network to explore the interdependency of these infrastructures. We describe the topological characterization of two interdependent small-sized real networks, based on which the interdependent model is devised. We define the interdependent factor to characterize the direct interdependency of two infrastructures, and also its fluctuation in the situations of random removal and targeted removal on the electric and water infrastructures is studied. Furthermore we propose a matrix M to reflect all direct and indirect interactions among infrastructures, which also makes contributions to the understanding of infrastructures catastrophes. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.