Robustness of regional air transport networks

Citation

Lordan, O., Sallan, J. M., Fernandez, V.; Gonzalez-Prieto, D. (2015). Robustness of regional air transport networks. 2015 ATRS World Conference. National University of Singapore (Singapore)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to compare the robustness of regional airline route networks (RARN) facing errors (random isolation of several airports) and attacks (isolation of central airports that may cause a major damage to network connectivity). Nodes of RARN are airports of a region, and there is an edge for each pair of airports connected by a direct flight (Zannin and Lillo, 2013). The regions analyzed are Africa, Asia, Australasia, Caribbean, Central America, Europe, Middle East, and North and South America. It has been proven that the topology of airline route networks makes them resilient to errors, but vulnerable to attacks(Guimerà et al., 2004, 2005). Robustness to errors is assessed through several simulations of random node isolation are performed, and robustness to attacks through several node selection criteria (Petreska et al, 2010). Network resilience is assessed through the decrease of the size of giant component as a function of the fraction of isolated nodes, and through a normalized vulnerability index based on edge betweenness (Boccaletti et al., 2007, Lordan et al., 2015). Results show that air global network regions have quite different values of resilience, being the Asian and European networks the more robust, and Australasia and Middle East the less resilients.