Dynamic Robustness Analysis of a Two-Layer Rail Transit Network Model

Robustness is one of the most important performance criteria for any rail transit network (RTN), because it helps us enhance the efficiency of RTN. Several studies have addressed the issue of RTN robustness primarily from the perspectives of given rail network structures or static distributions of passenger flow. An open problem that remains in fully understanding RTN robustness is how to take the spatio-temporal characteristics of passenger travel into consideration, since the dynamic passenger flow in an RTN can readily trigger unexpected cascading failures. This paper addresses this problem as follows: (1) we propose a two-layer rail transit network (TL-RTN) model that captures the interactions between a rail network and its corresponding dynamic passenger flow network, and then (2) we conduct the cascading failure analysis of the TL-RTN model based on an extended coupled map lattice (CML). Specifically, our proposed model takes the strategy of passenger flow redistribution and the passenger flow capacity of each station into account to simulate the human mobility behaviors and to estimate the maximum passenger flow appeal in each station, respectively. Based on the smart card data of RTN passengers in Shanghai, our experiments show that the TL-RTN robustness is related to both external perturbations and failure modes. Moreover, during the peak hours on weekdays, due to the large passenger flow, a small perturbation will trigger a 20% cascading failure of a network. Having ranked the cascade size caused by the stations, we find that this phenomenon is determined by both the hub nodes and their neighbors.