Assessing the vulnerability of empirical infrastructure networks to natural catastrophes

Human-made infrastructures are complex systems continually exposed to events that threat their function, such as cascading failures, occurring when the flow of physical quantities is redistributed within the network as a consequence of localized disruptions. Nevertheless, the role played by exogenous catastrophic events and internal failures on the robustness of critical infrastructures is usually addressed independently, under simplifying assumptions and lacking a unified picture for realistic risk assessments. Here, we fill this gap by introducing the Operational-Affected-Dismantled (OAD) model that captures both local and nonlocal failure propagation mechanisms. The model combines reaction–diffusion processes for local spreading with a global field effect for long-range interactions, allowing us to quantitatively characterize the cascade dynamics in infrastructure networks. Moreover, we include information on external stressors to assess the robustness of empirical network infrastru...