Emergency-induced effects on high-speed railway networks: A complex network theory’s perspective

摘要

In this paper, we analyze the characteristics of high-speed railway networks in the presence of emergencies from a complex network theory’s perspective. First, we represent the railway network by a graph where the nodes denote stations and the edges denote train flows. For a railway network system, the punctuality of trains and the number of trains running through stations are the two main factors for evaluating emergency-induced effects. We thus assign each edge of the graph a weight which is determined by these two key quantities. Then we propose a method to estimate the delay of trains and some metrics are introduced to analyze the properties of the railway network under disruptive events. These metrics may be also used to quantify the influences of the emergencies. Finally, examples are provided to illustrate the developed theory.