Vulnerability in Networks - A Survey

Abstract

The analysis of vulnerability in networks generally involves some questions<br />about how the underlying graph is connected. One is naturally interested<br />in studying the types of disruption in the network that maybe caused<br />by failures of certain links or nodes. In terms of a graph, the concept of<br />connectedness is used in different forms to study many of the measures<br />of vulnerability. When certain vertices or edges of a connected graph<br />are deleted, one wants to know whether the remaining graph is still<br />connected, and if so, what its vertex - or edge - connectivity is. If on the<br />other hand, the graph is disconnected, the determination of the number of<br />its components or their orders is useful. Our purpose here is to describe<br />and analyses the current status of the vulnerability measures, identify its<br />more interesting variants, and suggest a most suitable measure of<br />vulnerability.