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Large but rare cascades triggered by small initial shocks are present in most of the infrastructure networks. Here we present a simple model for cascading failures based on the dynamical redistribution of the flow on the network. We show that the breakdown of a single node is sufficient to collapse the efficiency of the entire system if the node is among the ones with largest load. This is particularly important for real-world networks with a highly hetereogeneous distribution of loads as the Internet and electrical power grids.
Crucitti et al. (Thu,) studied this question.