Every complex system has an inherent network that represent the structural relationship between its elements, and a convenient way to interpret this interaction is through the graph theory. In this work, the urban public transport network of Sao Paulo is reinterpreted as a complex network, abstracting its operational details and focusing on connectivity. Using the resulted graph, a characterisation of the statistical properties of the network is performed. Further, we propose a model that permit to simulate the network vulnerabilities, with the purpose to get a topology and structure that increases the robustness. The node degree distribution shows evidence of scale-free phenomenon, while the average length of paths indicates the small-world property. These findings support two main characteristics observed in the literature such networks: they have a high rate of robustness under random failure but are vulnerable to targeted attacks on important nodes or links.

Authors

Sandro Sousa Researcher in Complex Systems and Complex Networks at University of São Paulo.

Young Researchers e-session

Photos by : Derek K. Miller