Robustness of Interdependent Power Grids and Communication Networks: A Complex Network Perspective

In this brief, by considering realistic network operational settings, we propose a novel model to investigate the cascading failures in interdependent power grids and communication networks. We perform a critical node analysis on single networks to identify the vital nodes from the perspective of network robustness. Moreover, we assess the robustness of an interdependent system composed of an Internet AS-level network and the IEEE 118 Bus. Our simulation results show that assortative coupling of node destructiveness is more robust for densely coupled networks, whereas disassortative coupling of node robustness and node destructiveness performs better for sparsely coupled cases.