Operational Perspectives Into the Resilience of the U.S. Air Transportation Network Against Intelligent Attacks

Abstract

Protecting critical infrastructures has been deemed a natural security imperative by the U.S. Government for the past 20 years. The resilience of transportation infrastructures is of particular importance, as they serve a crucial rule in economic development and citizen mobility throughout the world. This paper presents a defender-attacker-defender model to analyze the potential impacts of intelligent attacks and worst case disruptions on the U.S. air transportation network, as well as possible protection steps that could be taken to minimize the negative outcomes of such disruptions. Furthermore, to analyze the effects of intermodal connections on the resilience of the air network, a second layer representing a hypothetical bus network is added to the model and studied. We use these models, supported by publicly available data, to identify routes likely to be attacked by intelligent adversaries and those critical to the resilient operation of the air network in such scenarios. We also demonstrate the potential benefits of intermodal linkages toward maintaining network operations and identify promising research directions for this type of integrated and intelligent transportation system.

Recent Progress about Flight Delay under Complex Network

“…(4) In research studies on attack/recover strategies, as well as investigations on identifications of influential nodes/edges to network resilience and flight delay propagations, most frequent adopted select criteria are to choose node/edge by random or by values of topological metrics. Sophisticated algorithms, such as Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm [73], adaptive saving and rerouting edge strategy [74], and defender-attacker-defender optimization model [78], have been applied for more effective attack strategies. While to the best of our knowledge, recover strategies still rely on topological indices.…”

“…(2) Under complex network framework, conventional attack strategy and recover strategy are to remove and recover nodes/edges one by one based on the values of topological metrics. Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm [73], adaptive saving and rerouting edge strategy [74], and defender-attacker-defender optimization model [78] have been employed for more effective attack strategy. While, to the best of our knowledge, investigations about recover strategy still rely on topological indices.…”

“…ompson and Tran [78] utilized a three-stage optimization model (defender-attacker-defender) to analyze USA air transportation network robustness.…”

“…However, to the best of our knowledge, we have not noticed much progress in recover strategies. Current relevant literatures neither take traffic information into account nor study recover strategies through the modelling of network system evolutions such as [73,74,78]. Influential nodes or edges to network robustness can be identified by the attack and recover strategies.…”

Methods to Measure the Network Path Connectivity

“…However, more and more attacks on and failures of complex networks have caused huge losses to people's production and lives. As some rare occurrences in the past have shown, complex networks are still vulnerable to diverse attacks [3][4][5][6]. To prevent these losses, it is necessary to design robust networks to combat these malicious attacks.…”