title: Nonlocal effects and countermeasures in cascading failures.
abstract: We study the propagation of cascading failures in complex supply networks with a focus on nonlocal effects occurring far away from the initial failure. It is shown that a high clustering and a small average path length of a network generally suppress nonlocal overloads. These properties are typical for many real-world networks, often called small-world networks, such that cascades propagate mostly locally in these networks. Furthermore, we analyze the spatial aspects of countermeasures based on the intentional removal of additional edges. Nonlocal actions are generally required in networks that have a low redundancy and are thus especially vulnerable to cascades.
authors.affiliation: Forschungszentrum Jülich, Institute for Energy and Climate Research - Systems Analysis and Technology Evaluation (IEK-STE), 52428 Jülich, Germany.|Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Cologne, 50937 Köln, Germany.
authors.forename: Dirk
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Witthaut
authors.affiliation: Network Dynamics, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS), Am Fassberg 17, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.|Faculty of Physics, Georg August University Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Timme