Crash dynamics of interdependent networks

The emergence and evolution of real-world systems have been extensively studied in the last few years. However, equally important phenomena are related to the dynamics of systems’ collapse, which has been less explored, especially when they can be cast into interdependent systems. In this paper, we develop a dynamical model that allows scrutinizing the collapse of systems composed of two interdependent networks. Specifically, we explore the dynamics of the system’s collapse under two scenarios: in the first one, the condition for failure should be satisfied for the focal node as well as for its corresponding node in the other network; while in the second one, it is enough that failure of one of the nodes occurs in either of the two networks. We report extensive numerical simulations of the dynamics performed in different setups of interdependent networks, and analyze how the system behavior depends on the previous scenarios as well as on the topology of the interdependent system. Our results can provide valuable insights into the crashing dynamics and evolutionary properties of interdependent complex systems.