Catastrophes in Scale-Free Networks

An alternative model about cascading occurrences caused by perturbation is established to search the mechanism because catastrophes in networks occur. We investigate the avalanche dynamics of our model on two-dimensional Euclidean lattices and scale-free networks and find that the avalanche dynamic behaviour is sensitive to the topological structure of networks. The simulation results show that the catastrophes occur much more frequently in scale-free networks than those in Euclidean lattices, and the greatest catastrophe in scale-free networks is much more serious than that in Euclidean lattices. Furthermore, we have studied how to reduce the catastrophes' degree, and have schemed out an effective strategy, called the targeted safeguard strategy for scale-free networks.