AUTHOR=Song Bo , Jiang Guo-Ping , Song Yurong , Yang Junming , Wang Xu , Guo Y. Jay TITLE=A Novel Metric to Quantify the Real-Time Robustness of Complex Networks With Respect to Epidemic Models JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physics VOLUME=9 YEAR=2022 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physics/articles/10.3389/fphy.2021.805674 DOI=10.3389/fphy.2021.805674 ISSN=2296-424X ABSTRACT=

Spread velocity, epidemic threshold, and infection density at steady state are three non-negligible features describing the spread of epidemics. Combining these three features together, a new network robustness metric with respect to epidemics was proposed in this paper. The real-time robustness of the network was defined and analyzed. By using the susceptible–infected (SI) and susceptible–infected–susceptible (SIS) epidemic models, the robustness of different networks was analyzed based on the proposed network robustness metric. The simulation results showed that homogeneous networks present stronger robustness than do heterogeneous networks at the early stage of the epidemic, and the robustness of the heterogeneous networks becomes stronger than that of the homogeneous ones with the progress of the epidemic. Moreover, the irregularity of the degree distribution decreases the network robustness in homogeneous networks. The network becomes more vulnerable as the average degree grows in both homogeneous and heterogeneous networks.