Evaluating the Cascade Effect in Interdependent Networks via Algebraic Connectivity

Understanding how the underlying network structure and interconnectivity impact on the robustness of the interdependent networks is a major challenge in complex networks studies. There are some existing metrics that can be used to measure network robustness. However, different metrics such as the average node degree interprets different characteristic of network topological structure, especially less metrics have been identified to effectively evaluate the cascade performance in interdependent networks. In this paper, we propose to use a combined Laplacian matrix to model the interdependent networks and their interconnectivity, and then use its algebraic connectivity metric as a measure to evaluate its cascading behavior. Moreover, we have conducted extensive comparative studies among different metrics such as the average node degree, and the proposed algebraic connectivity. We have found that the algebraic connectivity metric can describe more accurate and finer characteristics on topological structure of the interdependent networks than other metrics widely adapted by the existing research studies for evaluating the cascading performance in interdependent networks.