Cascading failures on weighted urban traffic equilibrium networks

TLDR: Simulation of the cascading failure on weighted urban traffic equilibrium networks shows that, although the latter can support larger traffic flow, homogeneous networks appear to be more robust against cascading failures than heterogeneous ones.

Abstract: In this paper, we study the cascading failure on weighted urban traffic equilibrium networks by introducing a more practical flow assignment mechanism. The whole process including edges overloading to node malfunctioning, dynamic spanning clustering and the phase transitions trigged with O–D flow evolving is simulated. It is found that there are three districts: slow, fast and stationary (collapse for scale-free networks) cascading failure districts. And different topologies have large effects on the ranges of these districts. Simulations also show that, although the latter can support larger traffic flow, homogeneous networks appear to be more robust against cascading failures than heterogeneous ones.