Prevention and Mitigation of Catastrophic Failures in Demand-Supply Interdependent Networks

Abstract

We propose a generic system model for a special category of interdependent networks, demand-supply networks, in which the demand and the supply nodes are associated with heterogeneous loads and resources, respectively. Our model sheds a light on a unique cascading failure mechanism induced by resource/load fluctuations, which in turn opens the door to conducting stress analysis on interdependent networks. Compared to the existing literature mainly concerned with the node connectivity, we focus on developing effective resource allocation methods to prevent these cascading failures from happening and to mitigate/confine them upon occurrence in the network. To prevent cascading failures, we identify some dangerous stress mechanisms, based on which we quantify the robustness of the network in terms of the resource configuration scheme. Afterward, we identify the optimal resource configuration under two resource/load fluctuations scenarios: uniform and proportional fluctuations. We further investigate the optimal resource configuration problem considering heterogeneous resource sharing costs among the nodes. To mitigate/confine ongoing cascading failures, we propose two network adaptations mechanisms: intentional failure and resource re-adjustment, based on which we propose an algorithm to mitigate an ongoing cascading failure while reinforcing the surviving network with a high robustness to avoid further failures.

Analysis of network disruption evolution of Chinese fresh cold chain under COVID-19

“…Zhang [ 17 ] used fraction of surviving nodes to measure the robustness of network cascading failures. Hosseinalipour [ 18 ] used number of surviving nodes to measure the robustness of network cascading failures. Yang [ 19 ] used fraction of failed node to measure the robustness of network cascading failures.…”

Negative Results on Deploying Distributed Series Reactance Devices to Improve Power System Robustness Against Cascading Failures

“…For instance, in [17] a load-shedding based strategy is proposed to mitigate the cascading outages. In [18], readjusting the resources and changing the grid's topology are considered for the mitigation strategy. Using a dynamic interaction graph, the proposed mitigation strategy in [19] finds the most critical lines within the grids in terms of the cascading outages and then applies a specific optimal power flow to prevent tripping of the detected lines.…”

Robustness of Cyber-Physical Supply Networks in Cascading Failures

“…Overloading may cause further failures of neighbor nodes and, finally, cascading failures of the global network. In [ 18 ], an extended cascading failure process triggered by resource/load fluctuations was proposed, considering the overload of the supply nodes and resource deficiency of the demand nodes. The load is preferentially redistributed along those higher-capacity nodes attached to the failed node [ 20 ].…”