Sequential Restorations of Complex Networks After Cascading Failures

Cascading failure on complex networks has been extensively studied over the past decade. However, restoration of networks from cascading failure is still relatively unexplored. In this paper, we consider cascading failure in conjunction with the restoration process involving repairing the failed nodes in a sequential fashion. Depending on the availability of resources, we tackle the sequential recovery problem from two distinct approaches, namely, result-oriented and resource-oriented restoration approaches. In the result-oriented approach, we aim to restore the network to the largest extent and within the shortest time. Heuristic network restoration strategies based on node load or degree are proposed. For resource-oriented restoration, we aim to maximize the increase of network size with a given number of nodes to be repaired, and we propose a novel iterative strategy to improve performance. Simulation results on the Barábasi-Albert scale-free network, Internet autonomous system-level network, and IEEE 300 bus power system have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed sequential recovery strategies.