Geographical effects on cascading breakdowns of scale-free networks

Cascading breakdowns of real networks have resulted in severe accidents in recent years. In this paper, we study the effects of geographical structure on the cascading phenomena of load-carrying scale-free networks. Our essential finding is that when networks are more geographically constrained, i.e., more locally interconnected, they tend to have larger cascading breakdowns. Explanations are provided in terms of the effects of cycles and the distributions of betweenness over degrees.