Cascading failures in local-world evolving networks

The local-world (LW) evolving network model shows a transition for the degree distribution between the exponential and power-law distributions, depending on the LW size. Cascading failures under intentional attacks in LW network models with different LW sizes were investigated using the cascading failures load model. We found that the LW size has a significant impact on the network’s robustness against deliberate attacks. It is much easier to trigger cascading failures in LW evolving networks with a larger LW size. Therefore, to avoid cascading failures in real networks with local preferential attachment such as the Internet, the World Trade Web and the multi-agent system, the LW size should be as small as possible.