Network Resilience to Geographical Disasters and Attacks

Joint work with Sebastian Neumayer, Gil Zussman and Eytan Modiano

Communication networks are vulnerable to natural
disasters, such as earthquakes or floods, as well as to physical
attacks, such as an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack. Such
real-world events happen in specific geographical locations and
disrupt specific parts of the network. Therefore, the geographical
layout of the network determines the impact of such events on
the network's connectivity. Thus, it is desirable to assess
the vulnerability of geographical networks to such disasters.
I will discuss several algorithms, based on mixed
linear planning and computational geometry, to locate such
vulnerabilities, and present some case studies on real networks.