#20 Are we resilient?

We live in an interconnected world.  The functioning of our cities is dependent on all sorts of networks. We have communication networks like the internet, energy distribution networks, or the traffic road system that ensures the flow of individuals and goods within a a given city.  A key feature of all these networks is their resilience —how they withstand the failure of individual components.  For a road network, how many road interceptions do we need to remove in order to break  the transportation network of a given city?

            Or, in the case of an intentional attack: how many of these interceptions need to be removed if they are removed strategically by targeting the most relevant ones (the so called hubs)? 

             In this project we aim at explore the resilience of different road networks and compare our findings  with other types of spatial embedded networks (granular powders, electrical power grids, etc...). Using concepts from percolation and complex network theory we will start by  describing what is the critical fraction of nodes that we need to remove to destroy the global traffic communication of different cities. From there we will explore how this threshold depends on the specificities of the cities involved and compare it with other network geometries.