Optimal cost for strengthening or destroying a given network

Amikam Patron, Reuven Cohen, Daqing Li, Shlomo Havlin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

Strengthening or destroying a network is a very important issue in designing resilient networks or in planning attacks against networks, including planning strategies to immunize a network against diseases, viruses, etc. Here we develop a method for strengthening or destroying a random network with a minimum cost. We assume a correlation between the cost required to strengthen or destroy a node and the degree of the node. Accordingly, we define a cost function c(k), which is the cost of strengthening or destroying a node with degree k. Using the degrees k in a network and the cost function c(k), we develop a method for defining a list of priorities of degrees and for choosing the right group of degrees to be strengthened or destroyed that minimizes the total price of strengthening or destroying the entire network. We find that the list of priorities of degrees is universal and independent of the network’s degree distribution, for all kinds of random networks. The list of priorities is the same for both strengthening a network and for destroying a network with minimum cost. However, in spite of this similarity, there is a difference between their pc, the critical fraction of nodes that has to be functional to guarantee the existence of a giant component in the network.

Original languageEnglish
Article number052305
JournalPhysical Review E
Volume95
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - 5 May 2017

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 American Physical Society

Funding

A.P., R.C. and S.H. thank the support from the Israel Science Foundation, Israel Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) with the Italy Ministry of Foreign Affairs, MOST with the Japan Science and Technology Agency, ONR and DTRA for financial support. R.C. thanks the support of the BSF. D.L. is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61573043).

FundersFunder number
Israel Ministry of Science and Technology
Office of Naval Research
Defense Threat Reduction Agency
United States - Israel Binational Science Foundation
National Natural Science Foundation of China61573043
Japan Science and Technology Agency
Ministry of Science and Technology
Israel Science Foundation
Ministry for Foreign Affairs

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