Comparing topological and reliability-based vulnerability analysis of Iran power transmission network

Power grids are one of the most important and critical infrastructures which societies rely upon for well-being. Their topological (structural) characteristics related to vulnerability can be analyzed from the viewpoint of complex network theory. In this article, we incorporate into this viewpoint some relevant reliability properties and apply the analysis framework to study the high-voltage power grid in Iran. To identify weak points in the structure, we look at four different centrality measures, namely, degree, betweenness, information and closeness, and analyze their correlation properties. This allows providing a more comprehensive picture of the vulnerability characteristics of the power grid structure. By our analysis, we show that reliability-based characteristics are different from purely topological ones as they are mostly uncorrelated. We also use a voting aggregation method, the Borda Count method, to perform an overall ranking of the most vulnerable nodes, considering both intentional attacks and random failures.