A critical review of vulnerability of transport networks: From the perspective of complex network

Vulnerability in transportation networks is a problem of an insufficient level of service not just a safety problem. This paper reviews the methodologies used in vulnerability analysis of transportation networks and particularly focuses on the application of complex network theory in this field. Considerable researches have been conducted on transport vulnerability, covering from theory to practice. However, only a few comprehensive reviews literatures on vulnerability of transport networks from the prospective of complex networks. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap. This paper shed some new light concerning to the main issues in vulnerability analysis of transportation network like topological methods, attack strategies, and vulnerability indicators. The challenges for vulnerability research are to develop robust and vulnerable measure methods which need to combine physical structures and social functions of transportation networks, to test the efficiency and preciseness of the assessing models, to explain the results from engineering view. These challenges are common to the vulnerability analysis in other real-world networks.