Information theory perspective on network robustness

TIAGO A. SCHIEBER; LAURA CARPI; ALEJANDRO C. FRERY; OSVALDO A. ROSSO; PANOS M. PARDALOS; MARTÍN G. RAVETTI

PHYSICS LETTERS A

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2016 vol. 380 p. 359 - 364

0375-9601

A crucial challenge in network theory is the study of the robustness of a network when facing a sequence of failures. In this work, we propose a dynamical definition of network robustness based on Information Theory, that considers measurements of the structural changes caused by failures of the network?s components. Failures are defined here as a temporal process defined in a sequence. Robustness is then evaluated by measuring dissimilarities between topologies after each time step of the sequence, providing a dynamical information about the topological damage. We thoroughly analyze the efficiencyof the method in capturing small perturbations by considering different probability distributions on networks. In particular, we find that distributions based on distances are more consistent in capturing network structural deviations, as better reflect the consequences of the failures. Theoretical examples and real networks are used to study the performance of this methodology.