Rewiring or adding links: A real-world case study of network vulnerability
Marco Tomassini
Abstract
We show that the robustness of complex networks issued from the real world can be significantly improved against deliberate attacks to high degree edges by using network modification techniques. Two methods are compared respectively based on edge rewiring and on adding edges according to an heuristic based on network bridges. We show by numerical simulation that both techniques are generally useful to decrease vulnerability of the network examples used which are of the infrastructure type. Edge rewiring in general leads to less vulnerable networks but in practice it is more difficult to carry out on real-world networks because of engineering and cost reasons. Edge addition, on the other hand, seems easier to apply for most infrastructure networks, is effective against random edge failures, and is also useful in protecting the networks from attacks targeting bridge edges.