Cascading failure model and resilience-based sequential recovery strategy for complex networks

Complex networks, which exhibit high connectivity, self-organization, small-world properties, and heterogeneity, are susceptible to the rapid spread of local failures, often resulting in cascading effects throughout the entire system. The paper introduces a cascading failure model based on biased random walks that incorporate betweenness centrality and the power-law distribution of node degrees. This model is used to investigate cascade failures triggered by extreme fluctuations in load that follow a Poisson distribution. Furthermore, we propose a resilience-based sequential recovery strategy that accounts for varying node recovery time and resource limitations, setting an upper limit on the number of nodes that can be in recovery simultaneously. The network’s robustness improves, and the variation in the power-law exponent during cascading failures and recovery decreases when the betweenness bias parameter is set to 1 instead of -1. The capacity parameter has the most significant and direct effect on improving the network’s robustness. Reducing node recovery time can improve the network’s initial invulnerability; however, its impact on final residual resilience remains limited. The power-law exponent of the initial network significantly affects residual resilience during the recovery process, with higher exponents leading to improved network performance. An appropriate increase in the number of nodes that can be in recovery simultaneously can enhance the overall recovery performance of the network. Extensive comparative simulations reveal substantial advantages of our proposed recovery strategy in enhancing network recovery.