RISK ASSESSMENT OF ATTACK-INDUCED CASCADE IN COMPLEX NETWORKS

For the complex networks, including scale-free, small-world, local-world and random networks, the global quantitative evaluation of attack-induced cascade is investigated in this paper by introducing the risk assessment, which integrates the probability of occurrence with the damage size of attacks on nodes. It is discovered by simulations, among the several kinds of networks, that the small-world network has the largest risk assessment of attack-induced cascade; the risk assessment of three other networks are all very low and the most protection against attack should be given to the small-world network accordingly. Furthermore, the percentage of the most fragile nodes in the scale-free network is very low, compared with that in the small-world network.