Dynamic Behavior of Interacting between Epidemics and Cascades on Heterogeneous Networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the interaction between epidemic spreading and cascading failures on heterogeneous networks, identifying a critical tolerance parameter that determines whether an epidemic can spread or is contained.

Contribution

It introduces a combined model of epidemic spreading and cascading failure, and proposes a method to estimate the critical tolerance value for epidemic spread.

Findings

A critical tolerance parameter exists that separates epidemic containment from widespread infection.

The proposed estimation method effectively predicts the critical value in BA networks.

Cascading failures can either inhibit or facilitate epidemic spreading depending on the tolerance parameter.

Abstract

Epidemic spreading and cascading failure are two important dynamical processes over complex networks. They have been investigated separately for a long history. But in the real world, these two dynamics sometimes may interact with each other. In this paper, we explore a model combined with SIR epidemic spreading model and local loads sharing cascading failure model. There exists a critical value of tolerance parameter that whether the epidemic with high infection probability can spread out and infect a fraction of the network in this model. When the tolerance parameter is smaller than the critical value, cascading failure cuts off abundant of paths and blocks the spreading of epidemic locally. While the tolerance parameter is larger than the critical value, epidemic spreads out and infects a fraction of the network. A method for estimating the critical value is proposed. In simulation, we verify the effectiveness of this method in Barab\'asi-Albert (BA) networks.