Percolation of heterogeneous flows uncovers the bottlenecks of infrastructure networks

Whether it be the passengers’ mobility demand in transportation systems, or the consumers’ energy demand in power grids, the primary purpose of many infrastructure networks is to best serve this flow demand. In reality, the volume of flow demand fluctuates unevenly across complex networks while simu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2021-02, Vol.12 (1), p.1254-1254, Article 1254
Main Authors: Hamedmoghadam, Homayoun, Jalili, Mahdi, Vu, Hai L., Stone, Lewi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
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Bottlenecks
Congestion
Demand
Electric power distribution
Electric power grids
Energy demand
Heterogeneity
Humanities and Social Sciences
Infrastructure
multidisciplinary
Network analysis
Overloading
Percolation
Power consumption
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Transportation networks
Transportation systems
Water supply
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Summary:Whether it be the passengers’ mobility demand in transportation systems, or the consumers’ energy demand in power grids, the primary purpose of many infrastructure networks is to best serve this flow demand. In reality, the volume of flow demand fluctuates unevenly across complex networks while simultaneously being hindered by some form of congestion or overload. Nevertheless, there is little known about how the heterogeneity of flow demand influences the network flow dynamics under congestion. To explore this, we introduce a percolation-based network analysis framework underpinned by flow heterogeneity. Thereby, we theoretically identify bottleneck links with guaranteed decisive impact on how flows are passed through the network. The effectiveness of the framework is demonstrated on large-scale real transportation networks, where mitigating the congestion on a small fraction of the links identified as bottlenecks results in a significant network improvement. Infrastructure networks are characterized by fluctuations of flow demand between different points and temporal congestion or overload on flow pathways. Hamedmoghadam et al. identify congestion bottlenecks in networks relevant to communication, transportation, water supply, and power distribution.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-021-21483-y