Cascading traffic jamming in a two-dimensional Motter and Lai model

TL;DR

This paper investigates how localized and dispersed attacks cause cascading traffic jams in a 2D geometric network, analyzing the critical attack size leading to total network failure based on network parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a study of cascading traffic jamming in a 2D geometric network using the Motter and Lai model, focusing on critical attack sizes and their dependence on network parameters.

Findings

Critical attack size for total jamming depends on average degree and system size.

Localized and dispersed attacks have different impacts on network robustness.

The tolerance parameter influences the network's vulnerability to cascading failures.

Abstract

We study the cascading traffic jamming on a two-dimensional random geometric graph using the Motter and Lai model. The traffic jam is caused by a localized attack incapacitating circular region or a line of a certain size, as well as a dispersed attack on an equal number of randomly selected nodes. We investigate if there is a critical size of the attack above which the network becomes completely jammed due to cascading jamming, and how this critical size depends on the average degree $\langle k\rangle$ of the graph, on the number of nodes $N$ in the system, and the tolerance parameter $\alpha$ of the Motter and Lai model.