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Revealing the structure of the world airline network

Resilience of most critical infrastructures against failure of elements that appear insignificant is usually taken for granted. The World Airline Network (WAN) is an infrastructure that reduces the geographical gap between societies, both small and large, and brings forth economic gains. With the ex...

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Autores principales: Verma, T., Araújo, N. A. M., Herrmann, H. J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4087919/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25005934
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep05638
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author Verma, T.
Araújo, N. A. M.
Herrmann, H. J.
author_facet Verma, T.
Araújo, N. A. M.
Herrmann, H. J.
author_sort Verma, T.
collection PubMed
description Resilience of most critical infrastructures against failure of elements that appear insignificant is usually taken for granted. The World Airline Network (WAN) is an infrastructure that reduces the geographical gap between societies, both small and large, and brings forth economic gains. With the extensive use of a publicly maintained data set that contains information about airports and alternative connections between these airports, we empirically reveal that the WAN is a redundant and resilient network for long distance air travel, but otherwise breaks down completely due to removal of short and apparently insignificant connections. These short range connections with moderate number of passengers and alternate flights are the connections that keep remote parts of the world accessible. It is surprising, insofar as there exists a highly resilient and strongly connected core consisting of a small fraction of airports (around 2.3%) together with an extremely fragile star-like periphery. Yet, in spite of their relevance, more than 90% of the world airports are still interconnected upon removal of this core. With standard and unconventional removal measures we compare both empirical and topological perceptions for the fragmentation of the world. We identify how the WAN is organized into different classes of clusters based on the physical proximity of airports and analyze the consequence of this fragmentation.
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spelling pubmed-40879192014-07-10 Revealing the structure of the world airline network Verma, T. Araújo, N. A. M. Herrmann, H. J. Sci Rep Article Resilience of most critical infrastructures against failure of elements that appear insignificant is usually taken for granted. The World Airline Network (WAN) is an infrastructure that reduces the geographical gap between societies, both small and large, and brings forth economic gains. With the extensive use of a publicly maintained data set that contains information about airports and alternative connections between these airports, we empirically reveal that the WAN is a redundant and resilient network for long distance air travel, but otherwise breaks down completely due to removal of short and apparently insignificant connections. These short range connections with moderate number of passengers and alternate flights are the connections that keep remote parts of the world accessible. It is surprising, insofar as there exists a highly resilient and strongly connected core consisting of a small fraction of airports (around 2.3%) together with an extremely fragile star-like periphery. Yet, in spite of their relevance, more than 90% of the world airports are still interconnected upon removal of this core. With standard and unconventional removal measures we compare both empirical and topological perceptions for the fragmentation of the world. We identify how the WAN is organized into different classes of clusters based on the physical proximity of airports and analyze the consequence of this fragmentation. Nature Publishing Group 2014-07-09 /pmc/articles/PMC4087919/ /pubmed/25005934 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep05638 Text en Copyright © 2014, Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Verma, T.
Araújo, N. A. M.
Herrmann, H. J.
Revealing the structure of the world airline network
title Revealing the structure of the world airline network
title_full Revealing the structure of the world airline network
title_fullStr Revealing the structure of the world airline network
title_full_unstemmed Revealing the structure of the world airline network
title_short Revealing the structure of the world airline network
title_sort revealing the structure of the world airline network
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4087919/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25005934
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep05638
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