Identifying Sensitive Components in Infrastructure Networks via Critical Flows

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel set of component importance measures that are based on the concept of critical flow. Various research communities have developed techniques for identifying critical components of networks. The methods in this paper extend previous work on flow-based centrality measures by adapting them to the assessment of critical infrastructure in urban systems. The motivation is to provide municipalities with a means of reasoning about the impact of urban interventions. An infrastructure system is represented as a flow network in which demand nodes are assigned both demand values and criticality ratings. Sensitive elements in the network are those that carry critical flows, where a flow is deemed critical to the extent that it satisfies critical demand. A method for computing these flows is presented, and its utility is demonstrated by comparing the new measures to existing flow centrality measures. The paper also shows how the method may be combined with standard approaches to reliability analysis.